This article analyzes the meaning and importance of firms to the performance of economies from the perspective of two representative theoretical issues, which constitute different views, though partially complementary: the New Institutional Economics (NIE) and the Evolutionary Institutionalist Theory. Such differences include the understanding of the meaning of 'institution' and the form of relations between individuals and institutions and those between them. Considering the firm as an institution and the unit of analysis, the Evolutionary Institutionalist Theory incorporates the concepts of governance and transaction costs to their analytic perspective, emphasizing its dynamic aspects. The role of firms in economic development becomes explicit with its double condition: institutions and innovation actors.
Institutions; Transaction costs; Innovation; Theory of the firm; Economic development
