The discipline of institutional economics has gained increasing prominence in recent years, because standard economic explanations can often not come to grips with major contemporary policy issues, such as economic reform in affluent, but dysfunctional economies, the transformation of the failed...

This thoroughly revised, extended and updated edition of a critically acclaimed textbook provides an accessible and cohesive introduction to the burgeoning discipline of institutional economics.

After several years of unrest in the international monetary scene, the governments of the EEC countries agreed in December 1969 at The Hague to place monetary union in Europe on the agenda. Behind this agreement, however, resides a wide range of differences of opinion, which are partly expressed...