Institutional economics is a sociocultural discipline and policy science which draws on the idea that economies are best understood through an appreciation of history, real-world institutions, and socioeconomic interrelations. This book brings together leading institutionalists to examine the tradition’s most essential perspectives and methods. The contributors to the book draw on a broad range of institutional thought from the classic work of Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, and Karl Polanyi, to the newer viewpoints of post-Keynesian institutionalism, feminist institutionalism, and environmental institutionalism. Methods range from frameworks used to analyze public policy and institutional change, to modes of analysis including myth busting, historically grounded narratives, and computer-based simulations. Each chapter surveys the origins, development, key features, applications, and frontiers of a particular viewpoint, framework, or mode of analysis. Due consideration is given to both strengths and weaknesses; and woven into the chapters is attention to core institutionalist concepts, including technology, institutions, culture, and complexity. The book provides economists with promising starting points for new research, students with contributions refreshingly in touch with the real world, and policymakers and social scientists with compelling reasons for engaging further with the institutionalist tradition.

The volume appraises, refines, and extends the institutionalist's evolutionary theory of political economy in six different areas of inquiry: (a) the provision of a fresh and comparative overview of institutional economics in general; (b) the presentation and refinement of pragmatic methods of inquiry; (c) the exploration of extensions and clarifications of instrumental value theory; (d) the distillation of an emergent institutionalist theory of labor markets; (e) the explication of a culture-based theory of economic development; and (f) the formulation of an analytical design that provides direction for institutional policy making. Institutional Economics: Theory, Method, Policy appears at an especially opportune time, when there is widespread and accumulating analytical dissatisfaction with received economic doctrine. The traditional neoclassical and Marxist views of how to explain, order, and operate a political economy are now in question throughout the world. Appeals are being made for more relevant and pragmatic, less doctrinaire and dogmatic, approaches to economic inquiry and problem solving. This volume provides fresh theoretical underpinnings for such problem solving efforts.

Consists of original and rev. versions of papers presented at a conference at Airlie House in Virginia, Mar. 1983. Includes bibliographies and index.

This publication presents one of the first attempts to integrate two emerging bodies of economic research: institutional economics and organizational theory. It begins within the framework of neoclassical economics, and then extends the boundaries of this framework to offer answers to questions that have so far remained puzzles in neoclassical economics. The integrated approach of this publication also challenges the dominant paradigm in economics over the last 15 years that views the market as the best mechanism for carrying out transactions. The market is not the only transaction mechanism; other modes of organization are also important. However, this way of thinking does not involve a simple reintroduction of the confrontation between the ¿government¿ and the ¿market¿. On the contrary, the integrated approach tries to open the ¿blackbox¿ of the role of institutions in daily life and the diversity of modes of organization. Through this integrated approach, the book hopes to contribute to a better insight to real world problems. Dr. Louis H.G. Slangen is Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy at Wageningen University. His teaching, research and supervising MSc and PhD theses are in the field of resource economics, economics of land-use, new institutional economics and economic organisation theory. His publication record consists of about 30 articles in refereed journals, 15 chapters in books, and 10 books. He has a long and extensive experience in various types of research projects for various Dutch Ministries and the European Union. Dr. Laura A. Loucks is Senior Researcher and Lecturer in Institutional Economics and Organization Theory at Wageningen University. Her research focuses on new and emerging institutions for sustainable fisheries management. She has been a consultant to the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans as well as the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. Her research on fisheries co-management agreements has been published in several books and in Marine Policy, one of the leading journals on marine management issues. Dr. Arjen H.L. Slangen has been Assistant Professor of International Business at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and is currently Assistant Professor of International Strategy at the University of Amsterdam. His research examines how national institutional environments influence the foreign entry strategies and performance of multinational enterprises. He has published in leading international business and management journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies and the Journal of Management Studies.

This publication examines issues of water sector reform and performance from the perspectives of institutional economics and political economic studies. The authors develop an alternative quantitative assessment methodology based on the principle of 'institutional ecology', as well as data collected from 127 water experts from 43 countries and regions around the world using a cross-country review of recent water sector reforms within an institutional transaction cost framework.

This book examines and compares the 'old' institutionalism of Veblen, Mitchell, Commons, and Ayres, with the 'new' institutionalism developed from neoclassical and Austrian sources.

An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.