The Evolution of Institutional Economics

Geoffrey M. Hodgson is Research Professor in Business Studies at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. He was formerly a Reader in Economics at the University of Cambridge, UK. His previous books include How Economics Forgot History (2001) and Economics and Utopia (1999), both available from Routledge.

PART I Introduction 1 Nature and scope 2 Agency and structure 3 Objections and explanations PART II Darwinism and the Victorian social sciences 4 Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer and the human species 5 Precursors of emergence and multiple-level evolution PART III Veblenian institutionalism 6 The beginnings of Veblenian institutionalism 7 The Darwinian mind of Thorstein Veblen 8 Veblen’s evolutionary institutionalism 9 The instinct of workmanship and the pecuniary culture 10 A wrong turning: science and the machine process 11 Missed connections: creative synthesis and emergent evolution 12 The launch of institutional economics and the loss of its Veblenian ballast PART IV Institutionalism into the wilderness 13 John R. Commons and the tangled jungle 14 Wesley Mitchell and the triumph of macroeconomics 15 The maverick institutionalism of Frank Knight 16 The evolution of Clarence Ayres 17 The Ayresian dichotomies: Ayres versus Veblen 18 The decline of institutional economics PART V Beginning the reconstruction of institutional economics 19 The potential revival of Veblenian institutionalism 20 On individuals and institutions 21 Conclusion and beginning