Is Capitalism Good for the Poor? program analyses empirical evidence to address the question of how capitalist institutions influence the well-being of the poor, whether in the context of communist China, in Brazil’s rainforest frontier, in democratic but tradition-bound India, or in the civil strife in certain African nations. Drawing from the insights of economic historian and Nobel Laureate, Douglass North, the discourse on economic development has shifted towards a focus on institutions, often referred to as the “rules of the game” that shape a nation’s expected behavior and patterns of interaction.