A review essay on Avner Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, xx+503.

This paper is motivated by the observation that (1) socio economic analysis uses significantly less formalisms than mainstream economics, and (2) that there exist numerous situations in which socio economics could benefit from a more formal analysis. This is particularly the case if institutions...

This paper examines game theoretic models of coordination conventions. Firstly, the paper shows that static models of coordination cannot explain the emergence of coordination conventions. The best interpretation of these models is that they study the conditions under which coordination is...

This paper proposes a central idea in diffusion research is that influential –a minority of individuals who influence an exceptional number of their peers- are important to formation of public opinion. Here we examine this idea, which we call the “influential hypothesis”, using the...

Резюме Представени са някои неортодоксални аспекти на институционалния подход към пазарите като социални структури (институции). Демонстрирана е възможността...

The article discusses consumption as a social process that is a part of social provisioning and is in an evolutionary interplay with other social processes. The discussion is grounded in, but is not limited to the contributions of Thorstein Veblen. The first section delineates social...

The main question of this paper is to investigate if and how the voluntary sector – as an institutional agent of the third sector - matters for the local development path. By adopting a multimensional and relational approach to the development, the paper surveys, compares and overlaps three...

This article evaluates Herbert A. Simon’s contribution to organization theory, placing special emphasis on the criterion of bounded rationality. Simon’s criticism of the orthodox version of organizational bureaucracy is interpreted and his analysis is extended to institutional economics. One...

Permanent readers of this journal have certainly noticed that the title of this article has a great similarity with the title of the issue No. 30 of the Revue du MAUSS. At first glance, the title of this issue “Toward another economic science (and thus toward another world)” may seem odd....

This volume – Predicting Crisis: Five Essays on the Mathematic Prediction of Economic and Social Crises – is the first of three sets of essays. In this first set the economic and social history of the United States is shown to be a “system of movement,” i.e. a logical and mathematic...