En este ensayo exploramos los supuestos epistemológicos y ontológicos que se adoptaron para que la ciencia política fuera “científica”. Mostramos que adoptó en general una filosofía ontológicamente reduccionista de la ciencia derivada de la física newtoniana. Este marco mecánico...

Professors Knoedler and Underwood discuss the concern over the decline in the number of economic majors as well as overall the enrolments in economics. For many “mainstream” economic educators this problem obey to the fact that academic economics tend to grant lower grades on average to...

In the last decade, the concept of social capital has been widely accepted by academics, advisors and government officials, who have attributed to it virtuous effects on economic and social development. However, theoretical and applied literature gives many different meanings to the concept of...

Las fallas generalizadas y duraderas de la economía académica se deben a la excesiva confianza en métodos de análisis matemáticos inapropiados. Muchos economistas heterodoxos piensan que el problema central es una forma de ideología político-económica, que la disciplina va por mal camino...

Corruption is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The aim of this article is to open the “black box” of corrupt transactions using the framework of the New Institutional Economics. First, it examines “corrupt contracts”, the institutions that promote them, the mechanisms involved, the...

Using bibliomterics and data mining tools, this article assess the performance of the Revista de Economía Institucional and identifies its strengths and weaknesses using eight evaluation criteria: level of specialization, research component, contribution to the popularization of science, role...

This paper discusses how the theory on the role of institutions in development can be improved, by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions. To understand the relationship between institutions and economic development, it is necessary to have some balance between...

This paper analyzes institutionalism’s contributions to development theory, and shows the need for a greater integration for the creation of successful institutional development strategies. It identifies the levels of institutional analysis, highlighting its frequency of change, type of...

This article presents a comparative analysis of the approaches of institutional economics and Walrasian economics. After reviewing the differences between both perspectives, it argues that institutional economics is an alternative, however incomplete, to general equilibrium economics. It...

This essay criticizes the commonplace definition of corruption as the misuse of public office for private gain. Both elements in this definition are wrong: corruption is also found in the private sector and in some exceptional cases it may not simply be for private gain. Another problem with...