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Unlearning Economics
Unlearning Economics

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Patron-Only Vid: 'Coming Out' as an Institutional Economist

References:

Fischer, Liliann, Joe Hasell, J. Christopher Proctor, David Uwakwe, Zach Ward-Perkins, and Catriona Watson. Rethinking economics. Taylor & Francis, 2017.

Hodgson, Geoffrey M. "The approach of institutional economics." Journal of economic literature 36, no. 1 (1998): 166-192.

https://www.exploring-economics.org/en/discover/agents-agents-everywhere/

Comments

Hello Pranav, sorry I missed this. I'd go with Coase, Veblen, Galbraith, and I'd count Ostrom on the list too!

Unlearning Economics

Hi UE! As a non-economist by profession, I've also been growing towards institutionalism (just finished Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance by Douglass North) so it was super cool to see this video! I already added a couple Geoffrey Hodson books to my reading list - do you have any other books/authors you recommend? I'm still mostly a layman but happy to read anything dense as well.

Pranav Anand

Good point, I recall a legal/historical scholar who was on Econtalk a good few years back arguing that the US political system is designed for paralysis, from either side. Wish I could remember the name!

Unlearning Economics

One point I really liked at around 5 minutes was the discussion about how policies--while not themselves being institutions--can create institutions. It reminds me of one of my favorite points about interest groups: We think that interest groups create policies, but very often policies create interest groups. I can't find a good source on it right now, but this is especially relevant given the US's constitutional structure. Back in the Tea Party era, lots of conservatives/libertarians celebrated the difficulties associated with getting legislation passed because it limited government. Setting aside questions about the desirability of such a state of affairs, the premise is also wrong. If you're a die-hard limited government deregulator, there are so many veto points for interest groups to kill any attempts to limit the scope of government intervention.

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