Value Theory and Economic Progress: The Institutional Economics of J. Fagg Foster

Value Theory and Economic Progress: The Institutional Economics of J. Fagg Foster
Author: Marc R. Tool
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9401139989

J. Fagg Foster (1907-1985) was one of the most significant creators of institutionalist economic theory in the twentieth century. He wrote and taught in the American intellectual tradition of Thorstein Weblen, John R. Commons, John Dewey and Clarence E. Ayres. This tradition shares purpose and philosophy with the European contributors, Gunnar Myrdal and K. William Kapp. Because little of Foster's scholarly work was formally published, professional knowledge of his extraordinary contribution is quite limited beyond the circle of his students and colleagues. Value Theory and Economic Progress attempts to correct that deficiency by providing an extended characterization of this missing and crucial component of the development of American heterodox economic thought. Its purpose is to demonstrate the timely relevance and significance of this model of inquiry in political economy. In addition, this volume explains that contemporary problem solving means changing `what is' into `what ought to be' through institutional adjustments; such a demonstration is at the heart of Foster's contribution to institutional thought.

Institutional Economics and the Theory of Social Value: Essays in Honor of Marc R. Tool

Institutional Economics and the Theory of Social Value: Essays in Honor of Marc R. Tool
Author: Charles M.A. Clark
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 940110655X

Marc R. Tool, both through his writings and his editorship of the Journal of Economic Issues, has had a profound influence on institutional economics. Tool's efforts, in his own words, "has been to keep values on the agenda of economic inquiry," which is another way of saying "keep economic inquiry relevant. " Tool's work on the theory of social value and instrumental valuation has helped to keep institutional economics focused on the core economic and social issues facing society, providing both a perspective from which to analyze the economy and a criteria for evaluating outcomes. This collection of essays is a testament to this legacy. Although these 15 chapters cover a wide and diverse range of topics, it is the common themes which are most striking: the inescapable necessity of values in economic discourse; the central role of valuation in economic activity; and most importantly, the requirement of democratic participation to achieve "efficient" solutions to the economic problem. These essays are offered to honor a body of work, a set of ideas, but mostly a man who, by directing economic inquiry to these core issues, has promoted "the continuity of human life and the noninvidious recreation of community through the instrumental use of knowledge.

Institutional Economics

Institutional Economics
Author: Charles J. Whalen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2021-10-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000462994

Institutional economics is a sociocultural discipline and policy science which draws on the idea that economies are best understood through an appreciation of history, real-world institutions, and socioeconomic interrelations. This book brings together leading institutionalists to examine the tradition’s most essential perspectives and methods. The contributors to the book draw on a broad range of institutional thought from the classic work of Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, and Karl Polanyi, to the newer viewpoints of post-Keynesian institutionalism, feminist institutionalism, and environmental institutionalism. Methods range from frameworks used to analyze public policy and institutional change, to modes of analysis including myth busting, historically grounded narratives, and computer-based simulations. Each chapter surveys the origins, development, key features, applications, and frontiers of a particular viewpoint, framework, or mode of analysis. Due consideration is given to both strengths and weaknesses; and woven into the chapters is attention to core institutionalist concepts, including technology, institutions, culture, and complexity. The book provides economists with promising starting points for new research, students with contributions refreshingly in touch with the real world, and policymakers and social scientists with compelling reasons for engaging further with the institutionalist tradition.

The Evolution of Institutional Economics

The Evolution of Institutional Economics
Author: Geoffrey Martin Hodgson
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780415322539

This exciting new book from Geoffrey Hodgson is eagerly awaited by social scientists from many different backgrounds. This book charts the rise, fall and renewal of institutional economics in the critical, analytical and readable style that Hodgson's fans have come to know and love, and that a new generation of readers will surely come to appreciate.

Classics in Institutional Economics, Part II, Volume 9

Classics in Institutional Economics, Part II, Volume 9
Author: Warren J Samuels
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2024-08-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1040247407

By the time of the interwar years the varied approaches often grouped together under the banner of Institutionalism had become firmly established as one of the most influential schools of thought in American economics. This is a collection of writings on the topic.

Institutional Economics: Theory, Method, Policy

Institutional Economics: Theory, Method, Policy
Author: Marc R. Tool
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2007-07-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0585296049

The volume appraises, refines, and extends the institutionalist's evolutionary theory of political economy in six different areas of inquiry: (a) the provision of a fresh and comparative overview of institutional economics in general; (b) the presentation and refinement of pragmatic methods of inquiry; (c) the exploration of extensions and clarifications of instrumental value theory; (d) the distillation of an emergent institutionalist theory of labor markets; (e) the explication of a culture-based theory of economic development; and (f) the formulation of an analytical design that provides direction for institutional policy making. Institutional Economics: Theory, Method, Policy appears at an especially opportune time, when there is widespread and accumulating analytical dissatisfaction with received economic doctrine. The traditional neoclassical and Marxist views of how to explain, order, and operate a political economy are now in question throughout the world. Appeals are being made for more relevant and pragmatic, less doctrinaire and dogmatic, approaches to economic inquiry and problem solving. This volume provides fresh theoretical underpinnings for such problem solving efforts.

Essays in Social Value Theory

Essays in Social Value Theory
Author: Marc R. Tool
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1986
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780873323826

This is a collection of Marc Tool's essays on instituitional econonics, written over the 1980s.

Classics in Institutional Economics, Part I, Volume 4

Classics in Institutional Economics, Part I, Volume 4
Author: Warren J Samuels
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 607
Release: 2024-11-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1040282563

Institutional economics is recognised as a peculiarly American development in economics — nothing quite like it emerged in Britain or continental Europe. As such, a knowledge of the literature of institutionalism is a necessary part of understanding the history of American economics and American social thought more broadly. The work of the authors featured in this collection served to create and define the American institutionalist tradition in economics: Thorstein Veblen, Richard Theodore Ely, John Rogers Commons, Robert Franklin Hoxie, Wesley Clair Mitchell and Walton Hale Hamilton. These figures were also central to institutionalism’s numerous debates on the unifying characteristics of the movement and its principal contributions — making this collection of their most important works a convenient vehicle to assess these issues. It is also of increasing value given the fact that the main concerns of institutionalists, such as the role of institutions and development of an evolutionary approach, having been coming back into prominence as important issues in economics.