Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T05:01:01.729Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

21 - What Is the Essence of Institutional Economics?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Daniel M. Hausman
By
Geoffrey M. Hodgson
Daniel M. Hausman
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access

Summary

Geoffrey M. Hodgson (1946–) is a Research Professor in Business Studies at the University of Hertfordshire (UK), the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics and was 2006 President of the Association for Evolutionary Economics. He is the author of more than a dozen books and nearly two hundred scholarly articles. His research has focused on institutions, and he also has had a long-standing interest in the history and methodology of institutional and evolutionary economics.

The term “institutional economics” was announced by Walton Hamilton at a meeting of the American Economic Association in 1918 [Hamilton 1919]. Institutionalism dominated American economics, at least until the 1940s. Listing a number of perceived attributes of this school, Walton Hamilton [1919, 309–11] claimed that institutional economics alone could unify economic science by showing how parts of the economic system related to the whole. Institutional economics was not defined in terms of any normative stance. Hamilton [1919, 313] declared: “It is not the place of economics to pass judgments upon practical proposals.” However, its appeal as a theory was that allegedly it could be used as a basis for policy. According to Hamilton [1919, 314–18], institutional economists recognized that:

The proper subject-matter of economic theory is institutions…. Economic theory is concerned with matters of process…. Economic theory must be based upon an acceptable theory of human behavior …

This was expanded by the following observations:

neo-classical economics … neglected the influence exercised over conduct by the scheme of institutions … Where it fails, institutionalism must strive for success … it must discern in the variety of institutional situations impinging upon individuals the chief source of differences in the content of their behavior [1919, 318].

Type
Chapter
Information
The Philosophy of Economics
An Anthology
 , pp. 399 - 412
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ayres, Clarence E.The Theory of Economic Progress. 1st ed. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1944.Google Scholar
Ayres, Clarence E.. Toward a Reasonable Society: The Values of Industrial Civilization. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S.Accounting for Tastes. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Commons, John R. “Institutional Economics.” American Economic Review 21, no. 4 (December 1931): 648–57.Google Scholar
Commons, John R.. Institutional Economics – Its Place in Political Economy. New York: Macmillan, 1934.Google Scholar
Commons, John R.. A Sociological View of Sovereignty, edited with an introduction by Joseph Dorfman. New York: Augustus Kelley, 1965.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John Kenneth. The New Industrial State. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. “The Institutional Approach to Economic Theory.” American Economic Review 9, Supplement (1919): 309–18.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walton H. “Institution.” In Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 8, edited by Seligman, E. R. A. and Johnson, A., 84–89. New York: Macmillan, 1932.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M.Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics. Cambridge and Philadelphia: Polity Press and University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M.. “Institutional Economics: Surveying the ‘Old’ and the ‘New’.” Metroeconomica 44, no. 1 (February 1993a): 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M.. Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back Into Economics.Cambridge, U.K., and Ann Arbor, Mich.: Polity Press and University of Michigan Press, 1993b.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M.. Evolution and Institutions: On Evolutionary Economics and the Evolution of Economics.Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1999.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Geoffrey M.. “Structures and Institutions: Reflections on Institutionalism, Structuration Theory and Critical Realism.” Unpublished mimeo, University of Hertfordshire, 2000.Google Scholar
Jolink, Albert. The Evolutionist Economics of Léon Walras.London and New York: Routledge, 1996.Google Scholar
Kapp, K. William. “In Defense of Institutional Economics.” Swedish Journal of Economics 70 (1968): 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukes, Steven. Power: A Radical View. London: Macmillan, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. “The Rationality of Economic Activity. Part II.” Journal of Political Economy 18, no. 3 (March 1910): 197–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C.. The Backward Art of Spending Money and Other Essays. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937.Google Scholar
Myrdal, Gunnar. Value in Social Theory. New York: Harper, 1958.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Malcolm H.Institutions in Economics: The Old and the New Institutionalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsuru, Shigeto. Institutional Economics Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein B.The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. New York: Macmillan, 1899.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein B.. The Place of Science in Modem Civilisation and Other Essays. New York: Huebsch, 1919.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×