Why are the ambitions of economic development practitioners and reformers so often disappointed? One answer is that development policymakers and reformers are congenital optimists. Another answer is that good plans are regularly defeated by those who occupy strategic positions. An intermediate answer is that institutions are important, yet are persistently neglected in the planning process. The article takes a bottom-up, microanalytic approach to economic development and reform. It examines the governance of contract, investment, and private ordering through the lens of transaction-cost economizing. And it assesses the efficacy of the de facto (as against the de jure) institutional environment with respect to credible commitments. In effect, institutional economists are cast in the role of archaeologists of economic reform and development—with the of task unpacking the lessons of the past to inform choices and programs for the future.