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...

This chapter delineates an evolutionary approach to the comparative analysis of economic systems and illustrates its usefulness via an exemplary application to recent developments in the European Union. The first part of the chapter describes the meta-theoretical foundations of the approach,...

What determines the realisticness of a model? It is argued that to come up with an account of model realisticness that can answer this question, one has to make strong philosophical commitments to an account of representation, an account of model-world comparisons as well as the ontology of...

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...

From the two premises that (1) economies are complex systems and (2) the accumulation of knowledge about reality is desirable, I derive the conclusion that pluralism with regard to economic research programs is a more viable position to hold than monism. To substantiate this claim an...