Four types of “economics” relevant for institutional analysis are distinguished: Standard Neoclassical Economics; Socio-Economics or Social Economics; New Institutional Economics; and Psychological Economics (often misleadingly called Behavioural Economics). The paper argues that an...

This paper discusses the literature on the enforcement of incomplete contracts. It compares legal enforcement to enforcement via relationships and reputations. A number of mechanisms, such as the repeat purchase mechanism (Klein and Leffler (1981)) and efficiency wages (Shapiro and Stiglitz...

Kürzlich hat Chr. Mantzavinos ein neues Wettbewerbsleitbild vorgeschlagen, das auf Ergebnissen der Neuen Institutionenökonomik und der Evolutorischen Ökonomik aufbaut. Er kritisiert die gängigen normativen Konzeptionen in der Wettbewerbspolitik, insbesondere die Idee des Wettbewerbs als...

Kürzlich hat Chr. Mantzavinos ein neues Wettbewerbsleitbild vorgeschlagen, das auf Ergebnissen der Neuen Institutionenökonomik und der Evolutorischen Ökonomik aufbaut. Er kritisiert die gängigen normativen Konzeptionen in der Wettbewerbspolitik, insbesondere die Idee des Wettbewerbs als...

Inertia in academia sometimes obstructs the development of important insights. That is one reason for the specially long gap separating Coase's seminal paper [1937] that laid the foundations of current Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and the efforts of scholars to develop his ideas. But as TCE...

Meta-rules, or rules for making rules, determine the costs of innovation and thus the pace of economic growth. Adapting rules to a changing economic environment through explicit, well-designed meta-rules makes economic growth quicker, less painful, and more certain than adapting rules through...