Rozwój terytorialny w świetle dorobku ekonomii instytucjonalnej. Przestrzeń – bliskość – instytucje

Abstract

Contemporary analyses of territorial development processes expose more and more often the impact of institutional environment on the economies, as well as on local and regional communities. This perspective takes into consideration both formal and informal institutions. It claims that such factors, as: transparency and efficiency of laws and regulations, efficient functioning of enterprises and public sector organizations, but also culture and the level of trust in the society, affect essentially the level of development, not only in national but also local and regional economies. What is more, in the conditions of growing mobility of capital, people, goods and information, certain institutional factors responsible for economic development are still localized, although their nature is sometimes elusive. This book aims at identification of the possible applications of institutional economics, in the analysis of territorial development processes, especially in the context of the relations between institutions, proximity, and the contemporary current understanding of the concept of “space”. The review and classification of various strands of institutional economics in terms of their helpfulness for the study of territorial development processes, highlights the role of institutions as more and more important factor of economic development. The reasoning of this monograph allowed to conclude high usefulness of various fields of institutional economics in the study of local and regional development processes, as well as the possibility of treating them as complementary research approaches. However, one of the important conditions for use of the achievements of institutional economics in the study of the processes of territorial development is a combination of data, theoretical base, as well as research methods and researchers. As far as the local and regional development policy is concerned, this work makes it possible to form a thesis that the effectiveness of this policy depends on the awareness of the complexity of the process of institutional transformation. Furthermore, the modern territorial development is the result of the hybridization of formal and informal institutions, resulting from the search for their optimal combination of different institutional layers in various spaces. Among the addressees of the book, we can mention the representatives of economic science, geography, management, and social scientists engaged in the exploration of institutional factors responsible for the socio- -economic development at local and regional level. It can be also interesting for the specialists of land-use planning, urban and regional economics, local government managers and employees, as well as workers of central government agencies responsible for regional planning, urban policy and spatial policy.