In his Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen compares the two basic approaches to evaluate institutions, transcendental institutionalism and realization-focused comparisons. Referring to Smith's Impartial Spectator, he argues in favour of the latter and proposes the principle of Open Impartiality....

The paper proposes to ground the taxonomy of economic systems on the identification of strongly performative institutions as distinctive features. I analyse performativity on the basis of the Aoki model of institutions, enriched by current approaches to performativity, which I combine with...

We posit that comparative advantage is discovered via alternative transactional regimes of trading. Transactional regimes are performative, based on different forms of embedded agency. The theory is applied on a study of Brazilian coffee business which manifests the increasing importance of...

This paper presents an overview of recent research in neuroeconomics, in the light of the question how these relate to institutional economics. I present a critique of Glimcher's recent internalist standard model of neuroeconomics and put forward the claim that only an externalist approach can...

In the past two decades, controversial evidence has been produced supporting the case for local protectionism in China. This paper overviews the most important contributions and presents a new approach which applies spatial econometrics on prefectural-level data. The main advantage of this...

In Georgescu-Roegen's classical, though controversial discussion of entropy in relation to economics, the dualism of mechanical and subjective time plays a pivotal role. I argue that this fundamental distinction also inheres modern approaches to maximum entropy. Following Searle, I introduce the...

In recent sociological studies of markets, especially financial markets, researchers have argued that economics is performative (MacKenzie, Callon et al.). By this they refer to the observation that theories such as the Black-Scholes formula do not simply describe reality, but contributed to the...

In his comprehensive critique of current economic approaches to social capital, Durlauf (2002) recommends a stronger reliance on methods of experimental economics and social psychology. This paper surveys different notions of social capital and submits an alternative conceptual approach based on...

Neuroeconomics stays in the center of the ongoing naturalistic turn in economics. It portrays the individual as a complex system of decision making mechanisms and modules. This results into a conceptual tension with the standard economic notion of the unity of the actor that is a systemic...

Economics is increasingly adopting the methodological standards and procedures of the natural sciences. The paper analyzes this 'naturalistic turn' from the philosophical perspective on naturalism, and I discuss the implications for the field of finance. The theory of finance is an interesting...