© Southern Regional Science Association 2011.

When I started to think about the topic of this paper/talk, I sat down with some colleagues and threw out a few general ideas to get their reactions. I envisioned days devoted to reading and hours thinking profound thoughts as I prepared it. I do not know why I had this fantasy. Long ago I learned that days devoted to reading are a luxury; something that surprises friends and family who are not professors. But I found my thoughts turning more to the everyday than the profound. As a result, this is a more personal view of regional science, which draws on my experiences and my training in both institutional economics and regional economics. I will start with some of those experiences and the questions they raised for me about the importance of institutions 1 in regional development and some of the difficulties of doing comparative regional research. While I include regions at many levels of aggregation, my particular interest is how to incorporate institutions into the analysis of regional differences in economic development. I want to explore what literature and methods are out there that can provide insights into better ways of incorporating institutions into comparative regional research