The West has been promoting its political and economic institutions and values and the route to prosperity in the rest of the world. But a lot of countries in the rest of the world only want to accept the instrumental value of the market as a necessary economic institution for economic growth and not the Western values and the institutions those values embody. There is growing agreement that the evolution of institutions is likely to be the central explanation of differing growth performances.
Institutions consist of formal or informal constraints, which constrain and guide human behaviour.
Institutions are needed in the shape of rules to limit selfish behaviour. By 'Lal- Myint is argued that the assumption is highly questionable that there is some tight connection between political factors and economic growth. History, not mechanics, is the proper discipline for understanding institutions and economic growth. This will be discussed in the next sections. The author focuses on whether and in what way cultural influences might effect economic performance.