Wieser as a Theorist of Institutional Change

Agnès Festré and Pierre Garrouste
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Pierre Garrouste: GREDEG CNRS

No 2015-37, GREDEG Working Papers from Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France

Abstract: In this contribution, we provide an interpretation of Friedrich von Wieser’s contribution to economics, which pays tribute to the originality of his work, and particularly his view of how institutions interfere with individual behavior. This interaction takes place within a disequilibrium framework where social influences such as power or social class, and psychological factors such as force of habit or herd behavior, are the product of human action but also constitute constraints on further action. The section 1 stresses the institutionalist background of Wieser’s economics. We concentrate on Wieser’s general method – which we assimilate to an example of Joseph Agassi’s (1975) institutional individualism – and his analysis of the emergence and evolution of institutions via the dynamics of leaders and masses. In the section 2, we reinforce and illustrate the ‘institutionalist’ stamp of Wieser’s economics by focusing on his work on monetary economics (Wieser 1904, 1909a, 1909b, 1927b) and his analysis of the emergence of money, based on our reading of Wieser’s Social Economics (Wieser [1927a] 1967) and The Law of Power (Wieser [1926] 1983).

Keywords: Wieser; emergence and evolution of institutions; money; economic sociology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B15 B31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme and nep-hpe
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http://195.220.190.85/GREDEG-WP-2015-37.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: WIESER AS A THEORIST OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE (2016)
Working Paper: Wieser as a theorist of institutionnal change (2016)
Working Paper: Wieser as a theorist of institutionnal change (2016)
Working Paper: Wieser as a theorist of institutional change (2015)
Working Paper: Wieser as a theorist of institutional change (2014)
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