Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> What mechanisms account for the long-run differences in economic development across historical settings? Current scholarship has renewed the argument that institutions are essential for promoting market transactions, industrialization, trade, and economic growth. In particular, recent work in economic history offers valuable empirical and theoretical insights into the development of market-supporting institutions, their long-term consequences, and their relationship to state-building. The purpose of this review is to bring contributions in economic history to the attention of sociologists interested in the evolution of economic institutions. Drawing on salient historical cases, the article contrasts formal market-supporting institutions that are provided by the state with settings where such public provision fails and private-order institutions based on reputation effects within informal social networks offer an alternative. Moving beyond mere existence proofs that institutions matter, the review then discusses recent advances in understanding the precise mechanisms responsible for the persistent effects of institutions on economic development. </jats:p>

<jats:p>The rapid growth of the platform economy has provoked scholarly discussion of its consequences for the nature of work and employment. We identify four major themes in the literature on platform work and the underlying metaphors associated with each. Platforms are seen as entrepreneurial incubators, digital cages, accelerants of precarity, and chameleons adapting to their environments. Each of these devices has limitations, which leads us to introduce an alternative image of platforms: as permissive potentates that externalize responsibility and control over economic transactions while still exercising concentrated power. As a consequence, platforms represent a distinct type of governance mechanism, different from markets, hierarchies, or networks, and therefore pose a unique set of problems for regulators, workers, and their competitors in the conventional economy. Reflecting the instability of the platform structure, struggles over regulatory regimes are dynamic and difficult to predict, but they are sure to gain in prominence as the platform economy grows.</jats:p>