Adaptation to the consequences of climate change has attracted increasing interest as a necessary complement to greenhouse gas mitigation. Economic approaches to climate adaptation are rarely articulated and discussed explicitly despite many benefits of such a framework-level discourse....

The sociologist R. Dahrendorf has recently suggested that there is no and there ought to be no convergence of economic policies towards some common ideal model. On the contrary, he states that diversity is [...] at the very heart of a world that has abandoned the need for closed, encompassing...

This paper shows how some of the most important concepts of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) can be expressed in terms of Implementation Theory (IT). First, it explains some of the expressions used by the NIE, such as institutions, transaction costs, property rights and methodological...

According to expressive law theories, expression of values is an important function played by the law. Expressive laws affect behavior, not by threatening sanctions or promising rewards, but by changing individual preferences and tastes and, in some cases, by affecting social norms and values....

Markets can only function well if there is an appropriate legal framework to restrict the behavior of market participants; however, the legal framework is inevitably inadequate. A “greedy” market participant that seeks to gain at the expense of others can usually find some way to do so. This...

This is an entirely new draft of the fifth chapter of my book “Foundations of Evolutionary Economics” which is going to be published by Edward Elgar in due course. With permission of the publisher, the draft chapters are posted on the web to facilitate academic discussion for further...

At the conclusion of 2017, to the dismay of journalists, pundits, and academics, large numbers of adolescents began consuming Tide Pods, a form of laundry detergent that is candy-like in appearance. This paper argues that purposeful consumption of laundry detergent may in fact be individually...

A great number of theories have been offered as to the root of the difference between the modern mind and the premodern mind. One neglected account comes from Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money, which argues that the rise of the mass money economy in the early modern era encouraged calculative...

This paper explores the dynamics of nation-building policies and the conditions under which a state can promote a shared national identity on its territory. A forward-looking central government that internalizes identity dynamics shapes them by choosing the level of state centralization....

This article discusses the use of imitation modeling in the conduct of institutional research. The institutional approach is based on the observation of social behavior. To understand a social process means to determine the key rules that individuals use, undertaking social actions associated...