Trento School of Social Sciences
DELoS Ph.D. Program – Development Economics and Local Systems
Institutional Economics and the Theory of the Firm 2016-2017
Ermanno Tortia
Reading list
Background readings institutional, evolutionary, and behavioural economics
General background readings in Institutional Economics
Hodgson, G. M. (1988). Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics.
(Polity Press, Cambridge, and University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia).
Hodgson, G.M. (1998), ‘The Approach of Institutional Economics’, Journal of Economic Literature,
Vol. XXXVI, March: 166-192.
North, Douglass C., (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Malcolm Rutherford (1994), Institutions in Economics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Malcolm Rutherford (1994), ‘Institutional Economics: Then and Now.’ The Journal of Economic
Perspectives, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer, 2001), pp. 173-194
The Elgar Companion To Institutional And Evolutionary Economics. (1994). Edited by Geoffrey M..
Hodgson. Samuels, W. J. and Tool, M. E., Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
The Elgar Companion to Recent Economic Methodology (2011). Edited by John B. Davis and David
Wade Hands. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Jack Vromen (2001). Economic Evolution: An Inquiry Into the Foundations of the New Institutional
Economics. London Routledge.
Allan Schmid, 2004. Conflict and Cooperation P: Institutional and Behavioral Economics. Oxford:
Wiley Blackwell.
Evolutionary economics
Kurt Dopfer (ed.) (2005), The Evolutionary Foundations of Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Geoffrey M. Hodgson, (1993). Economics and Evolution: bringing life back into economics,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Behavioural and experimental economics
Thaler, Richard H. (1991) (Ed.), Quasi Rational Economics . New York: Russel Sage Foundation.
Frey, B. S. (1997). Not Just for the Money: An Economic Theory of Personal Motivation, Cheltenham
UK, Edward Elgar.
Baxter, J.L. 1993. Behavioural Foundations of Economics. Basingstoke and London: MacMillan
Floris Heukelom. 2014. Behavioral Economics: A History. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
Edward Cartwright (2014). Behavioral Economics. London and New York: Routledge.
Reading list (specialized texts)
Old institutional economics and
Veblen, Thorstein T. (1898a). Originally published as “Why is economics not an evolutionary
science?,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 12(4): 373-397.
Veblen, Thorstein (1898b), ‘The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor,’ American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Sep., 1898), pp. 187-201
John R. Commons (1931), "Institutional Economics" American Economic Review, vol. 21, pp.648-657
Austrian Economics
Menger, C. (1892). “On the Origins of Money” first appeared in the Economic Journal 2 (1892): 239–
55.
Hayek F. (1945), ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, The American Economic Review, 35 (4), 519-30.
Israel M. Kirzner (1997), ‘Entrepreneurial Discovery and the Competitive Market Process: An Austrian
Approach’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 60-85
New Institutional Economics
Liberal institutional theory of the firm:
Alchian and Demsetz. 1972. ‘Production, information costs, and economic organization.’ The American
Economic Review 62 (December): 777-795.
Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, (1976), Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency
Costs and Ownership Structure, Journal of Financial Economics, October, 1976, V. 3, No. 4, pp.
305-360.
Satisfying instead of maximizing:
Herbert A. Simon (1951), ‘A Formal Theory of the Employment Relationship’, Econometrica, Vol. 19,
No. 3 (Jul., 1951), pp. 293-305
Simon, Herbert A. (1947). Administrative Behavior: a Study of Decision-Making Processes in
Administrative Organization (1st ed.). New York: Macmillan
New Institutional Economics:
Ronald Coase (1937). ‘The Nature of the Firm’,4(16) Economica, 386-405.
Williamson, O.E. (1973), ‘Markets and Hierarchies: Some Elementary Considerations’, The American
Economic Review, 63(2): 316-325.
Williamson, O. E. (2000), ‘The new institutional economics. Taking stock looking ahead’, Journal of
Economic Literature, Vol. XXXIIIX (September): 595-613.
Hansmann, H. (1996). The Ownership of Enterprise, The Belknap of Harvard University Press.
Evolutionary Economics
Hodgson, G. (2003), ‘The Mistery of the Routine’, Revue économique — vol. 54, N° 2, mars 2003, p.
355-384.
Nelson, R.R. and Winter, S.G. (1982). An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Behavioural and Experimental Economics
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, 1979. ‘Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.’
Econometrica, 47(2), pp. 263-291.
Akerlof George A. (1982), Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange. The Quarterly Journal of
Economics, Vol. 97, No. 4, pp. 543-569
Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert (1993). The Revenge of Homo Economicus: Contested Exchange
and the Revival of Political Economy. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 7, Number 1,
pp. 83–102
Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. Schmidt (1999). ‘A THEORY OF FAIRNESS, COMPETITION, AND
COOPERATION’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 817-868.
Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter, (2000). ‘Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity’. The
Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer, 2000), pp. 159-181.
Frey, B.S. and Jegen, R. (2001). "Motivation Crowding Theory". Journal of Economic Surveys,
15(5):589–611.
Cooperative enterprises and nonprofit organizations Cooperative enterprises Hansmann, H.B. (1996). The Ownership of Enterprise. Harvard University Press. Hansmann, H.B. 2013, All firms are cooperatives – and so are governments. JEOD -­‐ Vol.2, Issue 2. Web: http://jeodonline.com/sites/jeodonline.com/files/articles/2014/01/08/jeodhansmannallfirmsarec
ooperatives.pdf Hansmann, H.B. 1999, Cooperative firms in theory and practice, «LTA», 4:387-­‐403. Web: https://www.law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/Faculty/Hansmanncooperativefirms.pdf Nonprofit Organizations Hansmann, H.B., 1987, economic theories of nonprofit organizations. Weisbrod, Burton A. 1988. The nonprofit economy. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Weisbrod, Burton A. (Ed.) (1977), The Voluntary Nonprofit Sector, Lexington Books, Toronto. BenNer, A., & Van Hoomissen, T. (1991). Nonprofit organisations in the mixed economy. Annals of Publicand CoOperative Economics 62(4), 519–550. Kingma, Bruce R. (1997). Public good theories of the non-­‐profit sector: Weisbrod revisited. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, Vol. 8,No. 2, pp. 135-­‐148.