INSTITUTIONAL, EVOLUTIONARY AND CULTURAL ASPECTS IN MAX WEBER'S SOCIAL ECONOMICS

One of the keys to Max Weber's social economics is the evolution of institutional arrangements. In the first part, I show that Weber can be interpreted as an institutional economist. In the second part, I reconstruct the most important features of Max Weber's institutionalism, namely the interrelations between ideas, interests, institutions and social orders. In the third part, I demonstrate how Weber applied this institutionalist approach by looking at his economic explanation of the hampered economic development of China. Following Weber's concept, I finally make a few proposals as to how modern economic research could be enriched