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Publications (77)
All science makes an attempt to “carve nature at its joints” to study aspects of reality in isolation. Then the insights gained must be reconnected with the whole of nature. This reconnection is difficult and problematic. Additionally, there are gaps in our understanding regarding the nature of the reconnection. This leaves gaps in our understandin...
Capitalism always depends on relentless sales efforts to battle against its endemic tendency toward a lack of effective demand. Multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs), which offer individuals the “opportunity” to earn income by becoming independent direct-to-consumer salespeople, emphasize and epitomize the optimism, meritocracy, and work ethic parti...
Neoliberalism is an ideology that requires the public/private split in human affairs to exist and to be perceived as normal and natural. This paper begins by looking at the feminist critique of dualisms, as developed by the feminist institutional economist Ann Jennings and feminist economists Paula England and Julie Nelson and then applies their cr...
This research explores two conflicting ethical systems. Neoliberalism’s foundations support an overarching ethic of individual autonomy and individual responsibility. Institutionalism contrasts this conception with a view of human beings as relational. The ethical foundation of such a view requires a meta-ethic of interpersonal responsibility that...
This essay explores themes in Elizabeth Ramey’s book Class, Gender, and the American Family Farm in the 20th Century that are of interest from an original institutionalist perspective. In particular, it looks at the issues of land tenure, family structure, the character of emulation on the family farm, the effects of government programs on agricult...
In 1980, William Dugger published an article entitled “Power: An Institutional Framework of Analysis.” In doing so, he was following a long tradition in social and institutional economic analysis. This framework is the foundation for a good portion of Dugger’s later work and is a major theoretical achievement in institutional economics. This articl...
This article explores two conflicting ethical systems: neoliberalism and institutionalism. Neoliberalism’s foundations support an overarching ethic of individual autonomy and individual responsibility. Institutionalism contrasts this conception with a view of human beings as relational. The ethical foundation of such a view requires a meta-ethic of...
This paper considers the factors that currently shape and direct public policy formation in the United States. The paper begins by articulating the general position of institutionalists with regard to the purpose of public policy analysis and formulation. Next, a discussion of Thorstein Veblen’s view is presented focusing on his rejection of melior...
This paper discusses the role played by mythology in the public's perception, and the formation of public policy with regard to federal debt and deficits. It argues that three myths structure our understanding and prevent us from adopting reasonable policies. These myths suggest that most government action is deleterious, and that the government as...
This paper discusses public policy formation in terms of the social values of abundance, plentitude, and higher efficiency. It proposes an evolutionary framework for restructuring economic regulation for financial services consistent with those values.
David Hamilton is a leader in the American institutionalist school of heterodox economics that emerged after WWII. This volume includes 25 articles written by Hamilton over a period of nearly half a century. In these articles he examines the philosophical foundations and practical problems of economics. The result of this is a unique institutionali...
This article counters the claim that John Kenneth Galbraith’s work was descriptive in character. Instead, the case is made that Galbraith’s work was theoretical in nature. Galbraith was primarily a cultural theorist rather than the deductive formalist type theorist typical in mainstream economics. In particular, it is shown that Galbraith’s “revise...
In original institutional economics the study of the economy is culturally and historically specific. For institutionalists, economics is about the actual practices and processes of people in their everyday activities that provide the material support for the members of a community. Concepts, generalizations, analyses, and theories are developed fr...
In this paper, I draw upon considerable scholarship over the last two decades to discuss what I see as an emerging tendency in institutional economics, one shared with feminist and Marxist economists, to explore essentialist tendencies in their respective paradigms.1 One consequence of this shared agenda has been to bring scholars working in these...
This article explains the nature and significance of radical institutionalism. Radical institutionalism does not represent a break with the institutionalist paradigm, but an attempt to move it beyond its outmoded, Ayresian philosophical foundation. Radical institutionalism involves the introduction of three new elements into the contemporary stream...
This new edition of American Poverty in a New Era of Reform provides a comprehensive examination of the extent, causes, effects, and costs of American poverty nearly ten years after the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. The author includes the most current available demographic, budget,...
Clearly one of the central organizing foci of Marc Tool’s contributions to institutional thought is the thesis put forward in his 1980 Presidential address to the Association for Institutional Thought where he argued that a compulsive shift towards institutional analysis was underway. He argued that the reactionary counter revolution going on at th...
The concept of habit has played only a very small role in the social sciences since the 1930s. During the 1930s the concept was relegated to psychology; prior to then it was extensively used in sociology.' The concept has never had widespread use in orthodox economics, for reasons we will explore later, but it is found frequently in the early liter...
The Veblenian dichotomy, the distinction between ceremonial and instrumental aspects of behavior, is the primary tool of analysis of Institutional economists in the Veblen/Ayres tradition. Waller traces its developmentfrom the work of Veblen to the present, emphasizing the need for and possible direction of future change. The article specifically a...
