António Mendonça, Full Professor at ISEG-ULisboa, President of the Order of Economists Today, 00:08 Institutions are important and shape the course of the dimensions in which they operate. But it's important not to forget that from being dynamic, they can become blockers of progress. The justification put forward by the Academy of Sciences for awarding the Nobel Prize in economics to Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson is based on the contribution they have jointly made to understanding how institutions are formed and developed and in the process affect the production of prosperity and economic inequality between countries. This work has as its seminal reference the 2021 article, "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation", The American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 5. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, 2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the start of the Bretton Woods Conference (July 1, 1944), which created the system of monetary and financial institutions (IMF and World Bank) that were to support the reconstruction of the world economy in the aftermath of the Second World War. In this context, the IMF and the World Bank decided to set up a joint think tank with the aim of exploring the evolution of the global economy over a 20-30 year horizon and, above all, the role that the Bank and the Fund could play. This is undoubtedly a noble goal that should be followed with great interest. And the analyses of the recent Nobel laureates can only be a reference for the discussion of the reforms that the old institutions will have to incorporate in order to rise to the new challenges that the global economy is already facing. Bretton Woods was undoubtedly an immense leap forward in terms of international economic cooperation organizations and made it possible to rebuild and boost the international economy. It was a period in which strong GDP growth rates made it possible to accommodate rising incomes and the formation of broad middle classes that supported democracy and the export of the so-called Western model to different parts of the world, many of them in the process of asserting their independence from the former colonizing powers. But the effects wore off, especially from the end of the 1960s, when the hegemony of the dollar went into crisis, precisely as a result of the failure to make the necessary adjustments. In August 1971, President Nixon suspended the gold convertibility of the dollar, the cornerstone of the international monetary system, unilaterally putting an end to the Bretton Woods system and leading to the first major post-war international economic crisis, triggered by OPEC's decision to raise oil prices following the 1973 Yom Kypur war. A crisis whose effects have continued to this day. There is no doubt that institutions are important and shape the course of the dimensions in which they operate. But it's important not to forget that they can turn from enablers to blockers of progress, and a permanent effort is needed to adjust to the evolution of new contexts and needs. Ultimately, the quality of institutions depends on the quality of the people who shape them. António Mendonça, Full Professor at ISEG-ULisboa, President of the Order of Economists Today, 00:08 António Mendonça, Full Professor at ISEG -ULisboa, President of the Order of Economists