Characteristics of Reza Shah Economic Order

The Purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of institutional changes in Reza Shah Dynasty as compared to the previous era and see how effective were these changes in overcoming deep rooted development barriers at that historical time. We follow historical analytical method based on institutional thinking. On the bases of credible documents and evidence, in this paper, we show that most of institutional changes taking place in this period were of formal characters, being completely abstract from informal institutions. We, therefore, believe that formal institutional changes took place at that time, could not have enough impact for development.The changes introduced at that time concentrated mainly on official institutions, disregarding, and unaccompanied by informal institutions nullifying official efforts to overcome historical obstacles of underdevelopment of Iran.