The target paper by Elinor Ostrom in this Special Issue carries a clear message about her research agenda: be attentive to institutional diversity, be aware of the danger of ‘monoculture’ and ‘monocropping’ of rules. Although Ostrom was fully aware of the necessity to focus on relevant...

Douglass North, along with Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, transformed the early intuitions of new institutional economics into powerful conceptual and analytical tools that spawned a robust base of empirical research. NIE arose in response to questions not well explained by standard...

The seven volumes in the series cover the main aspects of research in the field, beginning with an overview of its analytical foundations in Volume 1. The subsequent volumes consider issues in transaction costs and property rights, the nature and role of contracts, the alternative modes of...

This important new book deals with some of the most fundamental issues of transaction cost economics. It focuses on the analysis of the internal nature and characteristics of organizations and on the subtle interactions between institutional environment and governance structures over time.

New Institutional Economics has developed considerably over the last twenty years, qualifying as a "progressive research program". This program is based on a hard core of concepts that apply to well identify objects: the alternative modes for organizing transactions, the institutional...