The paper presents the proceedings of the round table which took place within the Summer School organized by the Laboratory of the institutional analysis of economic reforms (SU-HSE). The participants included V. S. Avtonomov, Ya. I. Kuz’minov, Vad. V. Radaev, A. E. Shastitko. They discussed the place and disciplinary boundaries of institutional economics within the system of social sciences; problems of economic policy and their links to institutional analysis; the institutionalists’ interaction and cooperation with psychologists, sociologists, lawyers; the role of institutional economics in the applied economic research.