Der chinesische Kultur‐ und Wirtschaftsraum als Herausforderung für die InstitutionenökonomikHelmut Leipold

ASIEN – Nr. 76 (2000) pp. 29–46

One of the unresolved issues in modern institutional economics concerns the relationship between formal and underlying informal institutions. The analytical difficulty arises from the fact that informal institutions are not directly accessible to observation. They have to be disentangled by a theoretical approach which explains how culture, history and path dependence shape the institutional systems. This article presents a typological approach for identifying the impact of these variables. The approach is then applied to the Chinese cultural and economic area. It is shown that China represents a unique economic and social order which is dominantly structured by informal institutions. Finally the article suggests some open tasks and issues of Asian studies from the perspective of the institutional economics.