Thràin Eggertsson,
Economic Behavior and Institutions
Paul Craig Roberts and Karen LaFollette Araujo
, The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America
The economic thought of Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons and John Kenneth Galbraith is the emphasis of the first section of the course. The thinking of others of the traditional American institutionalist school, such as Clarence Ayres, Allan Gruchy and Morris Copeland is also treated. Some treatment of Copeland's flow of funds analysis is given. The relationships of American Institutionalism with the German Historical School and Latin American Structuralism are also treated. Peru under the regime of Alan Garcia is an example of structualist policy in operation.
There is some consideration of two other schools of thought, the Austrian School and the Marxist School, for comparison with the Institutionalist Schools of thought.
Modern institutionalist thought has its origins in the article by Ronald Coase on the theory of the firm. Institutions such as firms may arise as a way of minimizing or otherwise taking into account transactions costs. A very simplistic example of the influence of transaction cost arises in the determination of optimal order size. Another example occurs in the determination of production runs.
The neoinstitutionalist school is assocciated with Douglass North of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In neoinstitutionalist thinking institutions are not necessarily optimal solutions to a problem of transactions costs. The two texts are by economists associated with the neoinstitutionalist school.
The new institutionalism school is associated with Oliver Williamson of the
University of California at Berkeley. New institutionalism agrees with
neoinstitutionalism on many points but differs on others. For example,
Oliver Williamson adopts the "satisficing" approach of Herbert Simon rather
than the standard microeconomic approach of maximizing or minimizing.
Another topic of interest is the matter of property rights in the
Americas. How are property rights established in an environment
where they do not exist? Consider the case of
Antarctica.
Property Rights
Property rights are recognized as important in all schools of thought in
economics, but they are especially important in institutionalist
economics. One interesting application of the theory is to explaining
the creation of mining claims in California in
the days of the Gold Rush.
Institutional Reform
Latin America
Eastern Europe
Former Soviet Union
East Asia
Southeast Asia