Despite being a key term in institutional economics, the term "institution" seems to be used in various different ways. To what extent is this problematic, given that a shared understanding of key terms among scholars is a necessary condition for scientific progress? We review prominent...

We study a setting in which one or two agents conduct research on behalf of a principal. The agents' success depends on effort and the choice of a research technology that is uncertain with respect to its quality. A single agent has no incentive to deviate from the principal's preferred...

Peer reviews and rankings today are the backbone of research governance, but recently came under scrutiny. They take explicitly or implicitly agency theory as a theoretical basis. The emerging psychological economics opens a new perspective. As scholarly research is a mainly curiosity driven...

Agent-based simulations have become increasingly prominent in various disciplines. This trend is to be appreciated, but it comes with challenges: while there are more and more standards for design, verification, validation, and presentation of the models, the various meta-theoretical strategies...

This paper provides an introduction to a unifying heterodox approach to the micro-macro link in economics. We emphasize the analytical problems that may arise from popular misunderstandings about the relationship of individual and aggregate level and thereby illustrate why a thorough...