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Institutional interconnections: understanding symbiotic relationships

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2017

NADIA VON JACOBI Open the ORCID record for NADIA VON JACOBI [Opens in a new window]
NADIA VON JACOBI*
Affiliation:
Said Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, IT
*
*Email: nadia.vonjacobi@sbs.ox.ac.uk or nadia.vonjacobi@unipv.it
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Abstract

Institutions are the driving features of economic and human development. Together with other social structures they influence the trajectories of societal change. Such factors are however tightly connected and should not be analysed in isolation but considered as interdependent with each other. This study contributes to the understanding of interconnections among institutions and other structural factors by focusing on two features: the manifold nature of linkages and the possibility of relations being asymmetric. An analogy to symbiotic relationships, common in ecology, serves as inspiration for an innovative methodological strategy to empirically study multiple interconnections. Focusing on the Brazilian municipality level, the study includes 54 structural factors in a correlation network. Empirical results include the identification of centroids, meaning most connected factors, which tend to gain or lose importance at higher levels of municipal development; and the identification of positive asymmetric relationships between structural factors, which may inform on system dynamics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 5 , October 2018 , pp. 853 - 876
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2017 

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