About This Blog

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Dr. Eric Scorsone and Sarah Klammer started this blog in the fall of  2019 as part of their work developing a stronger Institutional Economics curriculum both at MSU and beyond.  More specifically, this blog serves as a place for developing ideas and thoughts that emerge during their review of institutional law and economics literature and through work on local governance issues with the Extension Center for Local Government Finance and Policy. Naturally, this means that the issues discussed may vary greatly from week to week, with posts by guest writers with differing areas of expertise (made clear in blog subtitles).  The spirit of this blog may often lean towards the heterdox, and we encourage readers to be aware that thoughts expressed may not always be the authors' own unwavering and expert opinion, but rather written in the spirit of "asking interesting questions" as they present themselves.

We will be posting as often as possible as we explore ideas in the frame of reference created by A.Allan Schmid, Warren Samuels, Dan Bromley, David Schweikhardt and others from the Great Lakes tradition of Institutional economics.

 Additional, "Starting" Resources:

 https://msu.edu/user/schmid/instecon.htm

 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00213624.2017.1368314

 https://www.canr.msu.edu/people/schmid_a

Navigation:

 "Pinned" posts will always appear at the top of the page, followed directly by most recent.  In order to locate posts based on subject or issue, use the "posts by label" drop-down to the left.  We will update posts with relevant labels as often as possible.

Popular posts from this blog

Announcing The Legal Foundations of Micro-Institutional Performance

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 Our book is out, and we are more than ready to share it!  After much patience, hard work, and delays on our part (and along the supply chain),  The Legal Foundations of Micro-Institutional Performance: A Heterodox Law & Economics Approach is in print and ready for use in advanced undergraduate law and econ classes, heterodox graduate level classes, and by practitioners conducting impact analysis. I encourage anyone interested to click through the hyperlinked text to view the introduction on Elgar's website-- simply click the cover of the book and the front matter will appear. We anticipate numerous reviews in institutional and law and econ journals in the coming months, and are grateful for any and all feedback directed our way. It's our hope that this framework doesn't stop developing here, but rather continues growing like Al Schmid's Situation-Structure-Performance model upon which the Legal-Economic Performance Framework is loosely based, or the application of
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Veblen Instinct of Workmanship - A quick additional thought pg. 242

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 On page 242, we see Veblen express something like a hypothesis regarding human mastery of technology. He writes that, "The larger the available body of information of this character, and the more comprehensive and unremitting the share taken by the discipline of the machine process in the routine of daily life, therefore, the greater, other things equal, will be the rate of advance in the technological mastery of mechanical facts." Veblen is pointing to the importance of a "rate" in assessing the relative changes in a society's move from the handicraft era to the machine or mechanical era. Of "this character" to what is he referring to? Here we need to look at what he discussed above. He is referring to the fact that the machine world needs information that is not of a personal or anthropomorphic character. The faster this type of knowledge and information is stripped from the ideas or information of a community, the faster its rate of advance in the
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Veblen Instinct of Workmanship pg 13-18

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Veblen pg 13-18 Instincts are inherited is the first statement of this section.  People do not respond to an external stimulus in the same way.  There is a makeup called the “spiritual nature” or human nature”.  Veblen argues that the degree of importance or influence of each instinct in each varies as well as their interactions vary as well. He talks about instincts being secondary or emerging out of the confluence of other factors.  They would vary amongst even the same race or group of people. We definitely see Veblen utilized some form of Darwinian evolution.  He discusses how amongst any group of people there will be a wide variety of instincts emerging. Some may even be so out of the average that they become a threat to the community. He suggests that these extremes may be selected out over time (although this certainly seems questionable and it is unclear which characteristics he specifically views as disserviceable). Veblen then goes on to write that, “the viability of European
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