The Institutional Revolution: A review essay

Richard Langlois

The Review of Austrian Economics, 2013, vol. 26, issue 4, 383-395

Abstract: This review essay discusses and appraises Douglas Allen’s The Institutional Revolution ( 2011 ) as a way of reflecting on the uses of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) in economic history. It praises and defends Allen’s method of asking “what economic problem were these institutions solving?” But it insists that such comparative-institutional analysis be imbedded within a deeper account of institutional change, one driven principally by changes – often endogenous changes – in the extent of the market and in relative scarcities. The essay supports its argument with a variety of examples of the NIE applied to economic history. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Keywords: Institutions; Transaction costs; Aristocracy; Military history; Factory system; B52; D02; D23; N01; N4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1007/s11138-013-0237-5

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