Power and Inefficient Institutions

This paper is concerned with the persistence of inefficient institutions. Why are they not replaced by more efficient ones? What and/or who prevents such change? We provide an answer to these questions based on two key ideas. The principal idea is that institutional change on an issue may adversely affect the bargaining power of some agents on different issues. The second is that certain kinds of frictions (or transaction costs) are present, which do not allow for this deteriorating bargaining power to be compensated for. A key insight obtained from our analysis is that, the greater is the degree of inequality in the players’ bargaining powers the more likely it is that inefficient institutions will persist.