Book Announcement: "Institutional Economics: Perspectives and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World"

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This week, we are shamelessly promoting the upcoming Institutional Economics: Perspectives and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Pub: October 28th, 2021). It is edited by our colleague Charles Whalen, who previously reflected on his career as an institutionalist on this blog here, here, and here. The book covers several major institutionalist perspectives and methods in one place. Other authors include Mary Wrenn, and Bill Waller, who are both interviewed in our Legal-Economic Nexus podcast. How Charles managed to pull this many-authored volume together throughout a global pandemic (with few setbacks) remains a mystery to me. 

Eric and I (with Charles) contributed a chapter in the latter section titled: "Institutional impact analysis: the situation, structure, and performance framework." This chapter covers the evolution of Schmid's model, using old files and drafts we found here at MSU and at the University of Wisconsin to piece together the SSP model. Through the writing process, we were able to learn more than we could have hoped, setting us nicely along the path to draft our own upcoming textbook: The Legal Foundations of Micro-Institutional Performance (expected publication March 2022). The SSP chapter is a nice precursor to the textbook, and other work we have in the pipes.

You can preorder Institutional Economics: Perspectives and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World here.

Table of contents:

Part I: Perspectives
Institutions, technology, and instrumental value: a reassessment of the Veblenian dichotomy
WILLIAM T. WALLER

Reasonable value: John R. Commons and the Wisconsin tradition
CHARLES J. WHALEN

Market society and the institutional theory of Karl Polanyi
MICHELE CANGIANI

Grappling with an ever-changing economy: the evolution of post-Keynesian institutionalism
CHARLES J. WHALEN

Culture, gender, and feminist institutionalism
JANICE PETERSON

Environmental sustainability in social context: an original institutionalist perspective
RICHARD V. ADKISSON

Part II: Methods
Investigational economics: a practitioner’s guide to economics in the tradition of John R. Commons
THOMAS KEMP

Institutional impact analysis: the situation, structure, and performance framework
SARAH S.H. KLAMMER, ERIC A. SCORSONE, AND CHARLES J. WHALEN

Myth busting: institutional economics and mythopoetics
MARY V. WRENN

Storytelling and institutional change: the power and pitfalls of economic narratives
CHARLES J. WHALEN

System dynamics, data science, and institutional analysis
MICHAEL J. RADZICKI

Location: East Lansing, MI, USA

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