7921507129

REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH OF REGIONS

June 2014

Jacek Zaucha¹

Abstract

The paper presents the results of review of literaturę on the role of institutions in development. The paper refers to the new economic geography and its findings on the importance of immobile territorial assetsfor local and regional development. This obsen/ation also plays an important role in the place-based policy paradigm proposed by Barca. Institutions such as soda! norms, sodal Capital or governance can be understood as immobile assets that cannot be easily replicated in other parts of the world and thus form specific development milieu. This paper examines how the concept of immobile assets has been used informal growth models within the mainstream of economics.

Growth models usually assume that institutions affect the stock of resources (especially human Capital) and their productivity. They are thus recognized as an element of TFP or in the equations portraying the accumulation of factors of production. The complexity of institutions, their universal character at least at a country level and lack of appropriate indicators makes the research on the impact of institutions on regional growth inconclusive.

JEL classification:    043, Rll, R12

Keywords:    growth, territorial assets, institutions, regional institutions, economic

growth

The paper uses the results of the project financed by the Polish National Science Centre "Concept of the territorial cohesion in cohesion policy. Implications for Economic Growth" (number 2012/05 / B / HS4 / 04212).

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Jacek Zaucha, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Gdańsk, Faculty of Economics, Department of Macroeconomics, [e-mail]:    Institute for Development, Research Fel Iow,

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