Institutions, ideas and economic change: some reflections on Geoffrey Hodgson's ‘Culture and Institutions’

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Joel Mokyr
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Price Mechanism ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Intellectual Environment ◽  
The Way

Abstract Professor Hodgson in his review of my A Culture of Growth (Princeton University Press, 2016) raises a number of important issues. One of them is the usefulness of the concept of a ‘market for ideas’ as an analytical tool in discussing the way cultural change affects economic change. Even though there is no price mechanism that clears the market, many basic components of the economic analysis of markets carry through and enriched by evolutionary concepts. A second question is the importance of cultural entrepreneurs, who play an important role in my book. It should be stressed that such ‘Vital Few’ were rarely indispensable, yet their influence on subsequent events may have imparted a direction on events and accelerated them. In any event, the success of such entrepreneurs was an indication of an intellectual environment sufficiently open to new ideas to be consistent with major new ideas such as the possibility and desirability of sustained economic progress.

Strategic Scripts and Nuclear Disarmament

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Harries ◽  
Benedict Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nuclear Disarmament ◽  
Stable Reduction ◽  
The Way

This chapter spans Freedman’s earliest focus on nuclear weapons and his development of strategic scripts as an analytical tool over three decades later. It discusses the way in which opposing logics of disarmament and armament co-existed in relation to nuclear weapons. It deploys the notion of strategic scripts to explain the contradictions inherent in approaches to nuclear disarmament, developing the concept of strategic scripts as it does so. The notion of scripts can be used to explore and even to promote nuclear disarmament. Two scripts, one of ‘stable reduction’, the other of ‘disarmament’, each serve to frame thinking. These scripts and the interactions they generate facilitate understanding of the way in which opposite instinctive reactions and, stemming from these, scripts about nuclear weapons co-exist, but are fragile as either an analytical or a strategic tool.

An Economic Analysis of Indian Behavior in the North American Fur Trade

1972 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. McManus
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
North American ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

This study of Indian behavior in the fur trade is offered more as a report of a study in progress than a completed piece of historical research. In fact, the research has barely begun. But in spite of its unfinished state, the tentative results of the work I have done to this point may be of some interest as an illustration of the way in which the recent revival of analytical interest in institutions may be used to develop an approach to the economic history of the fur trade.

scholarly journals Culture, Strategy, and State-Centered Explanations of Revolution, 1789 and 1989

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Sharman
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Culture Strategy ◽  
The Way ◽  
The French Revolution

Social scientists studying revolutions have increasingly argued that explanations of revolutions that do not include subjective factors, such as culture, are inadequate. The failure to explain the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989 is forceful testimony to this inadequacy. But the way in which cultural aspects are being added to existing approaches tends to undermine past advances in studying revolutions. Recent historiography of the French Revolution provides an example of a more thorough-going approach to political culture. A productive synthesis that both preserves past advances and better explains the revolutions of 1989 is achieved by analyzing the effects of cultural change on state elites.

Going Far by Going Together: James M. Buchanan’s Economics of Shared Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Art Carden ◽  
Gregory W. Caskey ◽  
Zachary B. Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Public Capital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Ethical Communication ◽  
Other Regarding Preferences

We explore themes in Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan’s work and apply his Ethics and Economic Progress to problems facing individuals and firms. We focus on Buchanan’s analysis of the individual work ethic, his exhortations to “pay the preacher” of the “institutions of moral-ethical communication,” and his notion of law as “public capital.” We highlight several ways people with other-regarding preferences can contribute to social flourishing and some of the ways those who have “affected to trade for the public good” might want to redirect their efforts. We show how Buchanan’s work has considerable implications for business ethics. Just as his economic analysis of politics changed how we understand government, we think his economic analysis of ethics can (and should) change how we understand business.

scholarly journals On the valuation of economic goods

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Wojciech Giza
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Monetary Value ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Economic Good ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Economic Goods ◽  
Philosophy And Economics ◽  
The Way

The presented study includes an analysis of the category of “good” on the basis of philosophy and economics. Particular attention was paid here to the factors determining the monetary value (price) of an economic good. While achieving the assumed objective of the research, answers to the following questions were sought: What is the difference, therefore, in the interpretation of good as an axiological category and good which economics deals with? What is the basis for the valuation of goods which are the subject of economic analysis? While seeking answers to these questions, an attempt was made to justify the thesis according to which contemporary understanding of the way the market valuates goods is limited to accepting the price understood as a variable representing a kind of relationship set in a given time period.

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