The economic science, the so-called ‘neoclassical economics’, has usually avoided considering the values of its field of study. This has led to important limitations in its theoretical system. This article intends to go beyond this neutral positivist approach. It presents different...

The positive influences of institutions to economic growth, commonly measured by GDP per capita, have been intensively tested by many empirical studies. However, as the challenges of pollution, corruption, and inequality raise up, the quality of economic development and how to achieve the good...

This paper investigates how different dimensions of social capital and institutional quality are related to innovation activity and its utilisation. For reasons of data availability, previous studies have included mainly patenting data. This study complements the previous studies by analysing...

This paper explores the problem of credible commitment that public officials face with regard to institutional reform. Doug North points out that while economies grow as a result of the provision of governance, I argue that creating an entity with a geographic monopoly simultaneously limits the...

The idea of measuring scientific relevance by counting citations is gaining ever-growing consensus among economists, and thanks to the electronic bibliographic resources now available the procedure has become relatively simple and fast. However, when it comes to putting the idea into practice...

This paper compares and contrasts two schools of political economy: the Austrian School, prominent members of which include Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises; and the Bloomington School, which was founded by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It is argued that the two traditions share a good deal in...

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue of this Journal on the topic of emergence in economics. After providing a brief explanation of what ‘emergence' actually is, the article then examines how the concept is used by exponents of various schools of thought in contemporary...

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to recent efforts to ground evolutionary theory in economics in the principles of Universal Darwinism. The paper will contrast two views of evolution, based on the Ultra-Darwinian and Naturalist theory of biological evolution, both of which are...

F. A. Hayek's contribution to economic science is broadly remembered as relating to the “use of knowledge in society” but his contribution to economics of knowledge are often summarized differently. We emphasize the contextual nature of the knowledge. Hayek says the market economy is capable...