David Dequech

State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) | UNICAMP

The general purpose of this article is to examine incentives and their relations with institutions and with other motivations. The article proposes a concept of incentives in a narrow and in a broad sense. It discusses the provision of incentives by different types of institutions (formal and informal social norms; conventions). It briefly consider...

This article begins by identifying different ways of conceptualizing political economy. In light of this conceptual discussion, it looks at political economy from an institutional perspective, in two different senses. First, paying special attention to the distinction between mainstream and nonmainstream in economics and in other disciplines, it co...

This article looks at the future of heterodox economics from an institutional perspective, while commenting on Geoffrey Hodgson's 2019 book on this issue. It contrasts heterodox and mainstream economics, identifies some problems facing the former and discusses what should be done.

The literature on mainstream economics usually takes the United States as the main geographical reference. However, the various criteria that define mainstream economics can be applied outside the United States. The ideas that have prestige and influence in a given country’s academia may not be the same ideas that constitute American mainstream eco...

This article proposes a conceptual and theoretical institutional approach to the relations between the economy and economics and uses it to examine, through a structured survey of the literature, the relations between institutions in the economy and the institutions of mainstream economics, macroeconomics, and financial economics, highlighting issu...

This paper applies an institutional approach to contemporary mainstream economics. It identifies some mental and behavioral rules of mainstream economics as a whole and of the mainstream segment of two important subdisciplines, namely, macroeconomics and financial economics. There are social reasons behind the sharing of these rules. They are insti...

The original (or old) and the new institutionalisms are alive in economics. Both are heterogeneous, dynamic, and thus difficult to define. In addition, despite some important differences, there are also some similarities between them, as well as some complementarity. Consequently the intellectual demarcation between the old and the new institutiona...

This paper presents a simulation model of the internet access services market. The model is based on neo-Schumpeterian evolutionary theory, as well as on the contemporary institutional theory. One key driver of the internet sector has been the significant technological opportunities. However, competition in the internet access services market has p...

Institutions are socially shared systems of rules of behavior or thought. This article considers the institutions of economics from a theoretical perspective, applying to economics itself ideas that have been used to study institutions in the economy and other domains. The institutions of economics are not often treated as such, but deserve attenti...

This article begins by presenting the idea of money as a convention, first in the economics of conventions and then in post Keynesian economics, also examining whether and how one can reconcile money as a convention with Keynes's essential properties of money. The article then considers the view of money as a creature of the state, in two versions,...

Financial conventions and basic interest rate in Brazil. This article discusses the thesis that the Brazilian interest rate is a convention, focusing on the basic interest rate under the inflation targeting regime. On the one hand, there are some complications involved in this debate. In order to show this, we consider the theoretical works that ha...

This article proposes a synthetic new concept of logics of action, intending to apply it to the market, the family, and the polity (inclusive of the state and the community) as crucial instances of what may be termed provisioning domains. These are the broadest or most general domains in which economic activities take place. This article defines a...

Why do economic agents conform with existing institutions? Drawing on economics and organizational institutionalism, this article identifies existing explanations, extends or refines some of them, suggests new ones, classifies these various explanations, and integrates them into an organized framework. One set of explanations focuses on conformity...

After briefly presenting the concepts of orthodox, mainstream and heterodox economics, and applying them to the contemporary period, this article discusses the Post Keynesian school and its relation to contemporary orthodox and mainstream economics. While opposed to the neoclassical orthodoxy, the Post Keynesian school has some positive unifying id...

The present article proposes a typology of the main varieties of uncertainty considered by economists and refines existing concepts. This typology combines three distinctions, between: substantive and procedural uncertainty; weak and strong uncertainty; and ambiguity and fundamental uncertainty. These concepts refer, or fail to refer, to factors su...

This article discusses the relation between economics and sociology, highlighting institutions among other social objects of study. The article points out several difficulties in distinguishing economics from sociology when the latter studies economic issues. Separating economics and economic sociology by defining each of them in terms of an approa...

Throughout his career, David Stark has always been attracted to novelty. He has studied organizations at their early stage while they were still riding the wave of the future. In two and a half decades, he caught three big historical waves: the dis-integration of communism, the rise of the Internet and the financialization of the world. These three...

This article discusses the relation between economics and sociology, highlighting institutions among other social objects of study. The article points out several difficulties in distinguishing economics from sociology when the latter studies economic issues. Separating economics and economic sociology by defining each of them in terms of an approa...

This paper examines Keynes's treatment of financial conventions, focusing on the stock exchange. It shows that Keynes's approach was unclear but insightful. Some elements are combined here to clarify his implicit concept, which incorporated features of a general concept (social sharing, conformity with the conformity of others, and arbitrariness) w...

This article attempts to contribute to the debate on how to define and theorize institutions, particularly regarding normativity and explanations for conformity. Firstly, it proposes some distinctions and concepts: it separates moral from epistemic values, leading to different types of legitimacy and social norms; then it distinguishes different me...

This article attempts to contribute to the debate on institutional logics, logics of action, identities, and the like, as part of the larger debate about both the concept of institutions and the theory of how institutions influence our thought and behavior. It proposes a distinction between logics of justification and logics of action. The establis...

This paper discusses the concepts of neoclassical, mainstream, orthodox, and heterodox economics, distinguishing temporally more general and more specific concepts. The concept of mainstream economics is based on prestige and influence and includes ideas taught in prestigious schools. Although the current mainstream (neoclassical economics included...

The new institutional economics (NIE) is diverse in terms of the theory of behaviour under uncertainty. Some views are close to neoclassical economics, but others are similar to those held by heterodox economists. Distinctions between procedural and substantive uncertainty, weak and strong uncertainty and ambiguity and fundamental uncertainty help...

Purpose – This paper comments on Theodore Koutsobinas's recent contribution to the debate on the formation of expectations in situations of strong uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach – The set of comments focuses not on doctrinal‐historical issues, but on Koutsobinas's theoretical framework, which is, in turn, a modified version of the analyt...

This article elaborates the analysis of asset choice proposed by Keynes and later adopted by Post Keynesians such as Paul Davidson and Hyman Minsky. The article incorporates the essential aspects of the theory of confidence presented in Dequech (1999)3. Dequech , D. 1999. Expectations and confidence under uncertainty. Journal of Post Keynesian Eco...

This paper explores some interconnections between the "original," or "old," institu-tional economics (OIE hereafter) and the French economics of conventions (EC hereaf-ter), with the aim of promoting a mutually beneficial cooperation between them. 1 Since its inception, 2 the EC has acquired a certain prominence in France, where it is one of the ma...

In an attempt to refine the concept of uncertainty, this paper elaborates an ontology of the social world concentrating on individuals, institutions and technology. It shows the strong entwinement of the ontological aspects of the conceptualisation of uncertainty and epistemological ones. It highlights the ontological and epistemological dimensions...

The paper discusses the role of uncertainty in economic sociology, aiming to clarify some controversial issues in the related literature. Initially, some conceptual remarks are made about the relation between economic sociology, neoclassical economics, and rational choice theory. Next, in light of the existing literature on uncertainty and economic...

A minority of economists and a relatively larger contingent of scholars in other social sci-ences have attempted to show that the neoclassical theory of economic behavior has seri-ous limitations and to develop alternative approaches. In this effort, both non-neoclassical economists and non-economists have enriched their work with research done out...

Some interpretations restrict the applicability of the General Theory to modern capitalism because of the financial institutions assumed by Keynes. Although acknowledging some evidence in support of these interpretations, the paper argues that Keynes also developed the fundamental elements of a general theory of unemployment and potential instabili...

When discussing the relation between rationality and conventions under non-neoclassical uncertainty, almost all economists focus on the rationality of following a convention. This paper contributes to the construction of an alternative approach, which argues that conventions and rationality are compatible but reasonable behavior may be conventional...

Proponents of the Veblen-Commons variety of institutionalism have distinguished this school from the so-called "new institutional economics" (NIE hereafter). Recent contri-butions to the Journal of Economic Issues have once again dealt with this issue. In a paper entitled "What Is the Essence of Institutional Economics?" Geoff Hodgson (2000a, 318)...

The notion of bounded rationality, originally developed by Herbert Simon, has occu-pied an important place in many discussions about an alternative to neoclassical eco-nomics. Some of these discussions take place within the so-called "old" (or "original") and "new" institutionalisms. In other cases, a connection between bounded rationality and an a...

The aim of this paper is to apply in the context of asset choice and liquidity preference some new ideas (developed elsewhere) about the determination of the state of expectation and about rationality under uncertainty. More specifically, the primary objective of the paper is to clarify the influence of confidence and animal spirits on asset choice...

This paper is an attempt to go beyond dichotomic taxonomies of the concept of uncertainty. It argues for the need to distinguish between at least two types of situation that have been opposed to what neoclassical economics deals with under the rubric of uncertainty or risk. These situations are associated with the concepts of, respectively, ambigui...

John Maynard Keynes is widely recognized as one of the greatest economists of the 20th century. For a growing number of his interpreters, Keynes’s emphasis on uncertainty and on the psychological aspects of expectations about the future are among his most significant contributions. References to Keynes’s notions of confidence and animal spirits, fo...