Civil society: Tracking 100 years of economic research beyond markets and states

Samuel Bowles, Wendy Carlin and Sahana Subramanyam

No 19166, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Using topic modeling on the corpus of papers published in seven leading economics journals since 1900, we study the evolving emphasis in research on themes relating to the state, markets, and civil society, the latter referring to families, firms and other private organizations, neighborhoods, and identity groups. We document a shift between 1900 and 1970 away from research on state-related topics towards the market, even as the economic importance of the state was growing. This was followed by a substantial movement away from market topics towards topics related to civil society. We associate the first shift with the mathematical formalization of the Marshallian paradigm. The subsequent increased attention to civil society coincided with novel empirical methods and research questions, including experiments and the use of large datasets. Advances in game theory and the economics of asymmetric information since the middle of the last century also facilitated the extension of economists’ research agendas to encompass themes central to economic behavior in civil society, including other-regarding preferences and social norms as well as strategic interactions not covered by complete contracts.

Keywords: Incomplete contracts; Asymmetric information; Game theory; Institutions; Mechanism; Civil society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B20 D01 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19166 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19166

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19166

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().