Les institutions déterminent, structurent et stabilisent certains ordres sociaux. Pour autant, elles ne sont pas seulement contraignantes mais constituent aussi une source de possibles permettant aux individus d’agir dans leur environnement. La notion d’institution est ainsi intimement...

The paper aims to show the overall coherence of the system of thought Commons employed to build his institutional economics. For that and in order not to stay enclosed within the American context Commons’ ideas have been considered to be dependent upon, we read him through the methodological...

Are institutionalism and structuralism compatible or do they confront each other? This article suggests an answer to this question, starting from an analysis of the structuration of these two paradigmatic fields of social sciences. It observes the existence in economies of both structuralist...

It is traditionally claimed that the State has three main categories of policies to implement: allocation, distribution and stabilization policies. In the present chapter we will be concerned only with stabilization policies or, more generally, with the role public policies may have in...

This article uses a competence-based approach to the firm in order to analyse the recent destabilisation of internal labour markets. We argue that increasing knowledge codification made possible by the diffusion of information and communication technologies has made competences less dependent...

Twenty-one papers explore the accomplishments, limitations, and unmet needs of the field of new institutional economics. Papers discuss the theories of the firm; contracts--from bilateral sets of incentives to the multilevel governance of relations; institutions and the institutional...