The aim of the paper is to assess the notion of social costs from an evolutionary institutionalist perspective. It argues that: social costs can be defined as the difference between the actual outcome of a historically defined capitalist market economy and the outcome desired by the members of...

Caffè's pursuit of a more humane society is strictly related to his view of the economy as a human construction within a more encompassing historical process. Based on this view, he conceives of economics as a policy-oriented social science where value judgments play a crucial role. They frame...

Over the last decade, workfare programmes provided support to the unemployed onlyinsofar as they were willing to accept a job. The theoretical underpinnings of these programmesare that institutional constraints prevent labour supply from adjusting to thetechnologically determined requirements of...

<p> The paper argues that the so-called canonical view of the Italian industrial district (ID)depicts it as a system whose economic and social vitality requires the interaction betweentwo major sub-systems: a community of people and a community of firms. A range ofcircumstances - including...</p>

  One of the key issues in K. Polanyi’s (1944, 1957) work is that capitalist markets maybe inconsistent with societal values. This (external) inconsistency eventually leads to areaction against the rationale of the market, what Polanyi refers to with the notion of thedouble movement. The...