Institutions are.....
What are institutions? We gather here many different definitions... Douglass North (2005)..."institutions are the constraints that human beings impose on human interaction. Those constraints, together with standard constraints of economics, define the opportunity set in the economy". One important point is that institutions are contrasted with belief systems which are defined as, "internal representations" and institutions are "the external manifestation of that representation". Thus, North is trying to make clear that in his viewpoint institutions are external to the observer and can be analyzed. David Reisman (2002) (from Kasper and Streit, 1998)...."institutions are the rules of human interaction that constrain possibly opportunistic and erratic individual behavior, thereby making human behavior more predictable and thus facilitating the division of labour and wealth creation". John R. Commons (1934)....."institutions are collect