Started reading some article about comparative economics. to be continued

Assertion: "Formal constraints, Informal constraints, and the their enforcement characterisitcs. Together they define the incentive structure of societies and specifically economies."

Assertion: "Most analysts select arbitrarily one or two key institutions with which to specify the economic system, for instance, market versus planned economy, the share of government ownership in the means of production, the relative importance of government expenditures or regulation, the dominant ideology, the most important economic values (individualistic, social, communitarian), the most common structure of enterprises, and so forth."

Criticism: "Moreover, we cannot be sure that the most important institutions and organisations in the economy are taken into account since only two or three features are singled out as crucial. Another problem in using these ad hoc procedures is that little attempt is made to link the selected criteria with the full range of other economic institutions and organisations that structure the society in question. Such approaches can be justified, however, when the analyst cannot get adequate data on the society's full range of economic institutions, although the results must be accepted with caution."