New Institutional Economics: A Guidebook
Edited by Éric Brousseau and Jean-Michel Glachant
Cambridge University Press, 2008
Institutions are today recognized as the main drivers of differences of performances among industries, nations, and regions. Thanks to Ronald Coase, Douglas North and Olivier Williamson, New Institutional Economics has been developing a comprehensive and consistent knowledge about the infrastructures required for the performance of an economy.
The field is burgeoning with researches on firms’ organizational strategies, the reshaping of industries, the design of markets, alliances and networks to manage innovations, the interplay between private self-regulation and public ordering, the performances of alternative legal systems, the respective role of formal (e.g. legal) and informal (e.g. beliefs, customs) institutions, the design of political and constitutional systems, the management of reforms, development and transition policies, etc. to carry out such a program, multi-disciplinarity stimulates cross-fertilisation among political sciences, anthropology, sociology, management sciences, law, and economics.
The goal of this book is to provide theoreticians, practitioners and advanced students in economics and social sciences with a guide to reconcile these many developments and better grasp the underlying methodologies. Based on contribution of recognized scholars, it draws a synthesis of the current knowledge and identifies the most relevant questions to be explored.
Buy the bookRead the introduction Author's index
Comments on the book
“The New Institutional Economics is an exciting and active research field, and a comprehensive guide to its achievements and future prospects has been long overdue. This book admirably fills this need. Chapters written by experts in various subfields are complemented by excellent commentaries by Oliver Williamson and the editors. New entrants to the field can use it almost as a textbook; practitioners will use it to reinforce their knowledge and as a great reference tool.’
Avinash Dixit
John J. F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics, Princeton University
“This guide offers the reader a tour de force through the ramifications of the new institutional economics. It is a reference not only for those scholars who find their roots in transaction cost theories but for all those addressing institutional analysis.”
Giovanni Dosi
Professor of Economics, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa
“New Institutional Economics (NIE) has been one of the most successful fields of applied economics, and its contributions have been far-reaching, methodologically and substantively. Methodologically, NIE has developed valuable intersections with other fields in economics, including game-theory, law and economics, public choice and constitutional political economy, industrial organization, managerial economics, and development economics. Substantively, the applications of NIE span through many disciplines, ranging from law to politics, to institutional design, to contracting and business organization. This book brings together a good number of distinguished scholars, each providing a systematic and in-depth account of the important methodological and substantive contributions of NIE in their fields of research. This book is a testament to the growing success of NIE and a valuable guide to its literature for both insiders and outsiders to the field.”
Francesco Parisi
Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School, and Professor of Public Finance, University of Bologna
“Institutions are core to strategy and international business. The main actor in strategy is the firm, and the main puzzle that is addressed by international business is why and how firms can successfully operate in institutional contexts that are different from their own. The size and scope of the firm are key issues in both fields. The choice of mode of entry in international business is the choice of which institution, the market or the firm, should be chosen by a domestic firm to exploit its advantages in foreign countries. Other key issues in international business, the relative costs and benefits of using equity joint ventures, and the impact of different institutional environments on the costs of doing business abroad, also revolve around institutions.
Eric Brousseau and Jean-Michel Glachant’s New Institutional Economics: A Guidebook provides a highly readable “road map” to the varied contributions of the New Institutional Economics. That eclectic stream of research, principally based on transaction costs, property rights, and agency theory, takes an applied perspective to understand how institutions work in the real world. Hence this literature is of immediate interest to strategy and international business scholars. This book, with chapters on organization and strategy, the theory of the firm, transition economies, franchising, make-or-buy decisions, and inter-firm alliances, among others, offers a wealth of fresh and provocative ideas from this emerging literature that are eminently useful to scholars in international business and strategy. ”
Jean-Francois Hennart,
Director of Graduate Studies in Business, Professor of International Management, Tilburg University
