Economic analysis plays a major role in the American legal discourse, while its position in the German-speaking legal debate remains comparatively limited. In Germany and Austria, a widespread aversion against law and economics can be observed among legal scholars. This article advances an...

This chapter summarizes the case for considering money as a legal institution. The Western liberal tradition, represented here by John Locke’s iconic account of money, describes money as an item that emerged from barter before the state existed. Considered as an historical practice, money is...

Max Weber's relationship to economics in general and to the Austrian School in particular has received more attention recently. However, this literature as conducted by Weber scholars and by Austrian economists exhibits two major deficiencies. First, the studies are often either purely...

This article is the introductory chapter to a festschrift in honour of Geoff Hodgson. In work spanning four decades, Geoff Hodgson has made many path-breaking contributions to institutional economics, evolutionary economics, economic methodology, the history of economic thought and social theory...

Ronald Coase merged two traditions in economics, marginalism and institutionalism. Neoclassical economics in the 1930s was characterized by an abstract conception of marginalism and frictionless resource movement. Marginal analysis did not seek to uncover the source of individual human...

The purpose of this essay is to describe and analyze the Austrian approach to law and economics within the context of the law and economics discipline. The important and distinctive feature of the Austrian approach is the emphasis on economic and legal processes. We focus on four themes within...

Before economists and sociologists came up with their own definitions of the term "capital", it was commonly understood as money invested in businesses by their owners or shareholders, and it continues to be understood this way in everyday business practice. In a recent article, Geoffrey Hodgson...

This essay examines the relationship between Austrian economics and economic history. It notes their different origins as scholarly fields, and divergent trajectories over the course of the twentieth century, before discussing recent examples of cross-fertilization and pointing to areas of...

Economic history has become an increasingly broad discipline, after a temporary narrowing following the cliometric revolution of the mid-twentieth century. Increasingly sophisticated econometric techniques are used to capture the institutional detail involved in the dynamics of historical...