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INTRODUCTION
Institutional analysis and the gift: an introduction to
the symposium
Stefan Kesting1, Ioana Negru2* and Paolo Silvestri3
1
Department of Economics, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK,
2
Management, Marketing and Business Administration, Lucian
Blaga University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania and
3
Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Turin, Torino, Italy
*Corresponding author. Email: ioana.negru@ulbsibiu.ro
(Received 25 April 2020; accepted 26 April 2020)
Abstract
How can gift and gift-giving studies be relevant to the study of institutions and vice versa? This is the
question we broadly address in the introduction to this symposium while drawing on the contributing
articles and sketching out a possible future research in a perspective of integration between these two fields
of study. Is the gift an institution? What types of methodological approaches would be most suitable in
view of such integration? We define the gift as transfers underpinned by institutions, including customs
and norms. We contend that the institutional thought can employ empirical and qualitative research
methods used by anthropology and that there are important and fruitful lines of tension between gift-giv-
ing and institutions –from the relationship between freedom and obligation to the role of third sector
between state and market –worthy of further research in the future.
Key words: Anthropology; gift-giving; gifts; institutional economics; institutions
1. Introduction
Market exchanges and gifts rest upon different belief systems, norms and values with a diversity of
cultural and historical dimensions. Markets and gifts are examples of institutions that make up the
institutional complementarity and diversity of modern economic systems (Negru, 2009).
Although gift-giving embodies rules, customs, conventions and principles of action, thus constitut-
ing an institution, it has been somewhat neglected even by institutional economists, with exceptions
such as Geoffrey Hodgson (1988) and Janet Landa (1995). Hodgson (1988) discusses the gift within a
framework of formal and informal institutions that govern the space of market exchange. Landa (1995)
draws on a conception of gift such as the symbolic Kula Ring exchange and shows that this can be seen
as an efficient institutional arrangement for exchange.
The purpose of this symposium is to explore and to begin to fill the gap left by institutional
research concerning the analysis of the gift and to advance a conception of the gift as an institutiona-
lised transfer. The articles collected in this symposium indicate a research path for institutional
research on gifts. The articles in this symposium proceed from theoretical–conceptual to more empir-
ical studies. By reflecting on the contributing articles, in this introduction to the symposium we try to
address the issue of how gift and gift-giving studies can be relevant to the study of institutions and vice
versa as well as indicate a possible research path for institutional research on gifts.
2. The concept of the gift: Mauss and beyond
Since Mauss’s well-known Essai sur le Don first appeared in 1925, gifts and gift exchange have often
been studied and theorised within the field of anthropology, often the gift being portrayed as a
© Millennium Economics Ltd 2020
Journal of Institutional Economics (2020), 1–10
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non-market alternative to capitalism (Polanyi, 1944). The Maussian conception of the gift rests on the
assumption that people give because they expect to receive, and that people respond to a gift because
they will fear others will stop bonding or interacting socially. The gift is based on three obligations: the
obligation to give, to receive and to reciprocate, where the maintenance of social ties is considered to
be essential (Mauss, 2002 [1925]).
In the Maussian tradition, Godbout and Caillé (1998: 20) define the gift as ‘any exchange of goods
and services with no guarantee of recompense in order to create, nourish or recreate social bonds
between people’. According to Caillé (2000: 47), the gift is: ‘every allowance of goods and services
made without a guarantee of return, with a view to creating, maintaining or regenerating the social
bond. In the relationship of the gift, the bond is more important than the good’. From the perspective
of this tradition, the gift facilitates social relationships of friendship, helps avoiding war and destruc-
tion through rivalry and ensures social order. Thus, the gift serves a useful function by reducing uncer-
tainty in some important social interactions. If we are to interpret the three Maussian obligations as
underpinned by rules and customs then, this definition of the gift would be compatible with
Hodgson’s approach to institutions (2006: 2), where these are defined as ‘systems of established
and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions’. In modern times, the institution of the
gift has evolved culturally and socially and has been subject to many transformations. Some forms
of gift are voluntary, free, disinterested and involve no return (e.g. gifts to beggars). This suggests
we need a better definition of the gift, adapted to modern times and large-scale societies mainly
made up of relationships among strangers.
Elder-Vass (2019) addresses the fundamental issue of how we should define the terms gift and giv-
ing in a way that acknowledges contemporary gift-giving. Elder-Vass notes the neglect of the analysis
of the gift by both mainstream and heterodox economics. Rare but notable exceptions in economics
are by Boulding (1973) and Mirowski (2001). Elder-Vass argues that such definitions exclude many
phenomena commonly understood as giving, as in the cases, for example, of gifts to strangers or char-
itable giving for environmental or animal causes, where no social bond can be created and no obliga-
tion to return can be expected. It is misguided to analyse gifts in contemporary settings in terms
derived from anthropological discussions of very different kinds of smaller and/or archaic societies.
Indeed, contemporary heirs of Mauss have strived to go beyond the studies of the gift in archaic soci-
eties and have acknowledged that the gift between strangers is a typical gift in modern times (Caillè,
1998; Godbout and Caillè, 1998; Silber, 1998).
Hence, Elder-Vass (2019: 7) proposes a definition of gift-giving and the gift as the ‘practice of vol-
untarily transferring goods or services to another party without any compulsory requirement for a
transfer in return’, although he has left unanswered questions such as how and when gift and gift-
giving can become institutionalised.
In their article, Cedrini et al.(2019) propose a reading of Marcel Mauss’s insights into gift exchange
using insights from institutional economics and elsewhere. They put forward two basic claims. On the
one hand, the gift is to be interpreted as (essentially) an institution arising from the self-transcendence
of social relationships that gifts themselves are expressly designed to create and according to which
individuals orient their behaviour. This perspective, originally developed by Anspach (2002), shows
how institutions emerge as a ‘third term’in a bilateral relationship between two parties engaged in
an exchange. Also, by relying on Hodgson’s(2004) rehabilitation of institutional economics in the
tradition of Thorstein Veblen (Camic and Hodgson, 2011), they try to rethink the relationships
between market and gift exchange.
Both Elder-Vass (2019) and Cedrini et al.(2019) discuss the Maussian definition of the gift and its
implications for subsequent studies. On the one hand, Cedrini et al. present an argument of the ‘neces-
sity of an institutional approach to economics’that derives from a certain reading of Mauss. For
Cedrini et al. systems of gift exchange ‘in their purity’presuppose the existence of three institutional
rules: the obligation to give, receive and return. On the other hand, Elder-Vass relies on Testart’s
(1998) critique of this definition implying an obligation and reciprocation: the obligation to recipro-
cate is a nonessential characteristic of gift and gift-giving. At the heart of these divergences there
2 Stefan Kesting et al.
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remain different conceptions of ‘obligation’,‘freedom’and their reciprocal tension, worthy of further
explorations, as we shall see later.
Despite being overlooked in some institutional approaches, gift-giving is a social norm and an insti-
tution, governed by certain rules, which has enjoyed different connotations within different societies,
across time. Before Mauss (2002 [1922]) distinguished between economic and social exchange and
used the example of exchange in the Kula Ring to point out that the gift is a type of social exchange.
He saw power and custom, rather than utility maximisation as driving social relationships. The gift, as
an institution, brings with it a set of values that govern the human relationships in society. The rele-
vance of the gift and its roles in different phases of economic development, for any school of thought
examining economic systems, is clearly visible in the contributions to this symposium.
3. Empirical institutional analysis of the gift and methodological implications
There is an institutional analysis of gift-giving in the articles in this symposium by Goodman and
Herzberg (2019) and Keith Taylor and Goodman (2019). They are also carefully executed empirical
institutional analyses of two very relevant case studies of gift giving, based on dense case descriptions
and the interpretation of contemporary and historical documents.
Goodman and Herzberg (2019)–‘Gifts as governance: Church Welfare and the Samaritan’s
Dilemma’–scrutinise the welfare programme of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in
the USA and focuses on how the church devised institutions to deal with the Samaritan’s dilemma
(Buchanan, 1975; Gibson et al., 2005; Schmidtchen, 2002; Skarbek, 2016) of never ending and growing
financial demands by claimants who have come to the conclusion that the church administrators will
under no circumstances withdraw their assistance. The authors argue on the basis of a consequential-
ist, rational choice, game-theoretic framework and they consider the best enabling and constraining
incentive structure for welfare recipients by the church, while the mechanisms described are actually
strict social monitoring and control accompanied by a strong set of shared values and religious ideol-
ogy which would suggest at least in part a deontological interpretation. Thus, there is another under-
current different from the rational choice framework in the article. This is probably due to the
influence of Boulding’s(1973) grants economics on the interpretation of the case. The authors also
highlight parallels in their themes and findings with sociological and anthropological work on gift
exchange and state: ‘we emphasize how gifts, social norms, culture, and ideology are mutually reinfor-
cing’(Goodman and Herzberg, 2019: 2). Moreover, they suggest in their conclusion that more detailed
qualitative work –participant observation and interviewing the welfare recipients and church admin-
istrators –could further the investigation into the motivation for behaviour on both sides of the
Samaritan Dilemma and enrich the insights of how the institutional mechanism works.
Taylor and Goodman (2019)–‘The stakeholder-empowering philanthropy of Edward Filene’–
develop a historical case study that addresses how the free-rider problem may hamper cooperation.
The argument is built on the interpretation of historical documents and describes the important
role played by Edward Filene’s empowering philanthropy in creating and sustaining a whole raft of
thriving building societies across the USA. The institutional analysis shows convincingly how grants
and philanthropy are used to overcome social dilemmas and create self-governing organisations which
would otherwise be undermined by debilitating collective action problems and unsurmountable trans-
action costs. While the study focuses on individual incentives, there is also an alternative ontology of
cultural cohesion, solidarity, community values, common bonds and the spirit of volunteer work
apparent in the case description.
The fifth research article of this symposium is also strongly empirical in nature. Hudik and Fang’s
(2019)‘Money or in-kind gift? Evidence from red-packets in China’, focuses on Chinese social norms
and advances a model of gift-giving based on social conventions. In particular, this paper focuses on
the acceptability of money or red packets in China and poses the following question: ‘When do
Chinese consider gifts appropriate?’(Hudik and Fang, 2019: 2). The relationship between the giver
and the recipient, alongside various occasions for gifting are of significance for the acceptability of
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certain forms of gift-giving. Two sizeable surveys were carried out. In the first survey, the authors
focused on gift-giving norms in general for various occasions and different types of relationships.
The second survey has concentrated on two important Chinese occasions where gift-giving behaviour
takes place: The Chinese New Year and birthdays. Contrary to other studies, the authors find occasions
essential in determining the forms of gift-giving behaviour and although they focus on the role of con-
ventions in determining forms of gift-giving, they conclude that gift forms are influenced by multiple
causal factors. Red-Packets or money gifts are seen as a ritualised gift, part of a ceremonial exchange
between individuals, while gift vouchers are found to be the least popular form of gift. So, cultural
context matters.
Reflecting on the methodological implications of these three empirical contributions to the sympo-
sium, one may ask: what kind of empirical research of gift giving is most fruitful in demonstrating the
institutional framework underlying such behaviour? The first empirical study by Goodman and
Herzberg (2019) is founded on interpreting texts issued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints and a historical study, the second inquiry by Taylor and Goodman (2019) is based on interpret-
ing historical studies and archival documents on the role of Edward Filene in his support of coopera-
tives. The third study is based on a survey. While limited, this shows a variety of qualitative and
quantitative methods employed.
However, to this day the core empirical method for anthropology in analysing institutional change
is ethnography or fieldwork –the dense description of human interaction drawn from a participant
observer who tries to keep as open a mind as possible when reporting and interpreting what he or
she sees, hears and picks up in other ways (Engelke, 2017: 14). Moreover, in their Economic
Anthropology, Hann and Hart (2011: 8) also emphasise: ‘we are sceptical of evolutionary models
grounded in notions of efficiency and abstract individual rationality, and argue instead for a more
rounded approach to economic organization that does justice to the material, historical and ethno-
graphic record’. Empirical evidence is recorded in the following way: ‘On the basis of this participant
observation the anthropologist amasses data, often in the form of diaries and fieldnotes’(Hann, 2000:
41). Ostrom (1990) has championed the use of anthropological field work to inform institutional eco-
nomic theory, but there are also industry and problem specific ethnographic studies which illustrate
such fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration (Graeber, 2011; Zaloom, 2006). As suggested by
Goodman and Herzberg (2019) at the end of their article, one may ask whether employing ethno-
graphic studies may not further enhance our institutional understanding of the gift.
Voigt (2013) also suggests more application of qualitative research methods. This is apparent when
one looks at the empirical case studies referred to by him to underpin his arguments and which are
based on ethnographic field work, surveys, in-depth interviews and other qualitative methods (for
instance Bernstein, 1992,Djankovet al., 2003, Ellickson, 1986,deSoto,1990). Moreover, he states
that: ‘factually observed behavior needs to be measured’(Voigt, 2013: 17) and that surveys without ethno-
graphic field research conducted in parallel are unreliable (ibid.: 18) or not ‘objective’(ibid.: 19). So,
inspired by the sociological, historical and anthropological influence on the empirical studies represented
in this symposium, one may wonder, whether a focus on the gift may lead to a stronger emphasis on and
even richer variety of qualitative research methods employed by institutional researchers in future.
1
The gift has iconic status for theory construction in social anthropology. Mauss (2002 [1925]) who
never did any ethnographic research himself took Malinowski’s(2002 [1922]) observation of the Kula
Ring and numerous other examples, from a diverse range of cultures dispersed widely in time and
space, to develop his theory of the gift and its tendency to create reciprocity, to then draw conclusions
for the industrial society of France in the 1920s. Though this interpretation of the Kula Ring has been
critically examined and convincingly questioned (Landa, 1995; Testart, 1998: 101–102) and led to
other critical reviews, it has nonetheless inspired scholars in diverse social sciences (Bataille, 1988
[1967]; Boulding, 1973; Dillon, 1968; Perroux, 1961; Polanyi, 1944,1968a,1968b) as well as decades
and even centuries of methodological battles fought within anthropology (Firth, 1967; Sahlins, 1972)
1
See also Skarbek (2020).
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and paradigm wars between anthropologists and economists (Hann and Hart, 2011; Marchionatti and
Cedrini, 2017; Polanyi, 1968a,1968b). So, when institutional economics engages with analysis of the
gift, this poses the question whether empirical methods employed by anthropologists could be used for
theory development in these analytical inquiries.
4. Institutionalised gift-giving: lines of tension and future explorations
The reason why it is interesting to reflect on the possibility of a cross-fertilisation between the studies on
gift and those on institutional economics is because both perspectives are partly overlapping, have areas
of tension and critical issues not sufficiently studied. Collaboration could be fruitful. We limit ourselves
here to indicating two particularly important problems for both perspectives: the problematic relation-
ship or tension between obligation and freedom on the one hand, and between state and market on the
other. In particular, two major institutions of modernity are at the heart of these tensions: the welfare
state and the third sector. It is no surprise that two contributions to this symposium focus on case stud-
ies from the third sector: Goodman and Herzberg (2019) as well as Taylor and Goodman (2019).
Furthermore, focusing on these institutions underlines the problem of the relevance of the gift phe-
nomenon in modernity, and, at the same time, to avoid an understanding of this phenomenon as
merely belonging to the sphere of private present-giving (Cheal, 2015).
To understand the problematic relationship between obligation and freedom, it is useful to ask: to
what extent can gift-giving practices and norms of reciprocity be institutionalised and even legally
enforced without losing some of its characteristics such as spontaneity, freedom and voluntariness?
Anthropological studies have remained trapped in an unfruitful contrast between those who con-
sider the social state’s redistribution mechanisms and welfare policies as a modern system of gift cir-
culation (Mauss, 2002; Titmuss, 1970), and those upholding that the state’s institutionalised
redistribution is incompatible with any idea of the gift (Godbout and Caillè 1998:51–64).
2
The
basic argument of the latter can be formulated as follows: if the citizen has a duty to pay taxes,
and if the freedom implicit in voluntary giving implies the freedom to give and not to give, then paying
taxes is not a gift. As Godbout and Caille argued, criticising Titmuss: ‘a gift that’s imposed is not a gift’
(ibid.: 60). We may call this issue the gift/duty dilemma. How to resolve it?
One way to rethink this dilemma is to bring the problem of legal–political obligation into the insti-
tutional discourse: why follow a rule or obey the law or authority? It would seem that while institu-
tional economic studies neglected, with a few exceptions, the problem of obligation, anthropological
studies, instead, ended up emphasising Mauss’s insistence on the universal obligation to reciprocate
too much. In this regard, though we may agree that one of Mauss’s main concern was to show that
‘human institutions everywhere are founded on the unity of individual and society, freedom and obli-
gation, self-interest and concern for others’(Hart, 2007: 9), the mere insistence on the fact that gift
conjugates ‘freedom and obligation’risks overshadowing their always problematic tension.
In particular, the universal obligation to reciprocate is not only empirically ‘false’, but also it obfus-
cates the different nuances that are given in the range of types of obligation, from moral to legal obli-
gation and related sanctions (Elder-Vass, 2019; Testart, 1998). On the other hand, there is no a priori
reason that allows us to exclude that a moral sanction is perceived, by the individual, as heavier or
more compelling than a legal one.
Furthermore, although it is true that institutional economics has dealt with the different types of
sanctions and enforcement mechanisms (Dequech, 2006; Voigt, 2013), it is also true that conceptions
of institutions as constraints (see Hodgson, 2006 on North) and norms as incentives (or rewards and
punishments) has reduced the problem of obligation to a cost-benefit calculation. This is partly due to
behavioural assumptions built on the utility maximising individual. This model, evades the possibility
of rule-following behaviours based on habits, morality, sense of duty, justice, beliefs or perceived legit-
imacy of authority (Hodgson, 2013,2014; McCloskey, 2015; Searle, 2001; Sen, 1982). The dominance
2
On this contrast see Silvestri (2019).
Journal of Institutional Economics 5
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of utility maximisation helps explain why mainstream economics has largely neglected the gift phe-
nomenon and its institutionalised forms.
The literature on homo reciprocans (Fehr and Gächter, 1998,2000; Fehr et al., 2002) is more prom-
ising, in so far as it has shown how people can obey or disobey the law and respond to the behaviour of
other subjects starting from a certain sense of duty or fairness or reciprocity, even if this is ‘costly’for
them.
Not surprisingly, another way to rethink the welfare state, redistributive policies and the problem of
their legitimacy is to try to re-read them in the light of studies on reciprocity (Bowles and Gintis, 2000;
Goodin, 2002; Ullrich, 2002; Wax, 2000). Above all, some studies have tried to conceptualise the wel-
fare state as an economic arena of redistribution ‘institutionalized’by different types of reciprocity
norms as ‘norms of social exchange’according to different historical–cultural types of welfare regimes
(Mau, 2004).
This approach seems to us to be promising, even if it deserves an analysis in itself to understand
how these reciprocity norms are internalised and perceived as legitimate, and how the tension between
freedom and obligation operates at an individual and social level as well as at an institutional level.
As for the tension between state and market, the questions are: to what extent does the state/market
dichotomy allow us to grasp the identity of the third sector as an institutionalised sphere of the gift?
And how do third sector organisations interact with the state and the market?
Distinguished scholars have long insisted on the limits of this dichotomy in understanding society,
the economy and institutions (North, 1990,2005). Ostrom, in particular, urged us to look ’beyond
markets and states’(Ostrom, 2010) given its incapacity to grasp the nuances, the specificity and the
variety of hybrid cases in between state and market. Sociologists and anthropologists (Adloff and
Mau, 2006; Godbout and Caillè, 1998) have long recognised the relevance of the third sector as the
arena par excellence that mediates the extended circulation of gift in modern society. But these
approaches have rarely learned from each other.
The state/market dichotomy has not helped much to grasp the specific identity of the third sector.
The very labelling as ‘third sector’marks it as being perceived as either a residual of the state and the
market, or merely as functional to the state and the market, i.e. designed to make either one or the
other work well (Donati, 2008). Not to mention the concept of ‘non-profit’which, on the one
hand establishes a negative identity –the non-profit –and on the other hand stems from an US
American cultural horizon from which it originates, and does not capture the historical–cultural dif-
ferences of the types of institutions that make up the third sector, especially those developed on the
European continent.
3
The challenge that the third sector therefore poses to the institutional economics is to be able to
think of its identity through the logic of the circulation of the gift, and beyond the state and the mar-
ket. However, this does not mean thinking of it as isolated from the state and the market.
Indeed, some studies on the relationship between the welfare state and third sector organisations
have focused on their relationship in terms of conflict or cooperation or as institutional crowding-out
or institutional crowding-in. For example, critics of the welfare state as a modern form of gift circula-
tion believe that the welfare state is always susceptible to perverting or crowding out the very idea of
gift or even destroying the ‘true’gift circulation occurring at the level of the civil society. In this per-
spective, the true actors of such circulation are the voluntary or third sector, associations, social net-
works and families, and not the state (Godbout and Caillé, 1998:51–64). However, to pose the
problem in terms of a pure trade-off between the third sector and the welfare state, and between
the third sector and the market, seems a little sterile and reductive.
3
The research developed by the John Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project since the 1990s (see at least, Salamon
and Anheier, 1996), constituted the benchmark for many other subsequent studies and statistical surveys (United Nations,
2003). A side effect of these studies is that they ended up neglecting important associative and organizational experiences
developed in the European context such as cooperatives and mutuals. Hence, other studies aimed at balancing the focus
in a more European perspective, more attentive to national varieties and specificities and are more historical-dynamically
oriented (Evers and Laville, 2004; Monzon and Chaves, 2008).
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It should first be clarified whether it is a normative or a positive analysis. In the first case, one should
at least make explicit and then analyse the values at stake or the values that one wishes to defend, for
example the values of civil society and the third sector, or autonomy or individual freedom, the freedom
to donate or to associate, etc., against the state or against the market. But this way of thinking will also
have to pay attention to the fact that in many cases, the third sector is highly dependent on the financing
that keeps it alive, both from the state (e.g. in European countries) and from the market (e.g. in the
United States). And this is also one of the (not trivial) reasons for which it does not make much
sense to contrast these spheres or to read them in the light of other simplifying dichotomies, such as
the ‘social’(=the ‘gift’provided by the ‘state’or the ‘third sector’) and the ‘economic’(=provided by
the ‘market’), especially if one considers that some types of third sector institutions as social enterprises
are ‘perfect’hybrids in between the ‘social’and the ‘economic’. A generalised criticism of the market or
the state risks cutting off the branch on which the third sector is sitting.
Moreover, empirical inquiries of ‘crowding out’or ‘crowding in’phenomena produced very differ-
ent results depending on the historical context in which they were carried out (for a survey of this
literature see Pestoff, 2008: 225ff) thus, showing the weight of the cultural background in which
both the welfare state and the ‘other’spheres of gift are located. Again, therefore, this should be a fertile
ground for studies conducted by institutional economists.
Also, we need to better understand the dynamics of complementarity and conflict between the third
sector and the state as well as the market. There are a few institutional economic studies on the third
sector that have focused on these aspects, especially emphasising the cases of complementarity
(Valentinov et al., 2015) or synergy (Christoforou, 2010). Other studies (Amendola et al., 2011), on
the other hand, have attempted a more explicit institutional conceptualisation of the third sector drawing
inspiration from Aoki’s definition of institutions (2001,2007) as a bundle of formal rules and subjective
shared beliefs, and showing the substantial complementarity of the third sector to the state and to the
market and how it contributes to promoting a culture of cooperation, altruism and solidarity.
5. Conclusion
A central proposition advanced in this introduction and in the symposium is the possibility of estab-
lishing a new research domain aimed at integrating institutional studies and gift studies, based on the
definition and interpretation of the gift as an institution. In this paper, we not only summarised the
contributions of the five research articles comprised in it, but also sketched the main aspects of this
research domain such as its subject matter, its methodology and the tensions between gift, gift-giving
and institutions in particular relevant areas such as the third sector and the welfare state.
The gift is essential for economic and also for institutional analysis for two reasons: we need a better
understanding of human behaviour in economics and we need to enhance the potential of the institu-
tions of the gift in explaining processes of economic development, alongside markets and the state.
We have explored this possible way of integration between these fields of study, and now a new path
of research seems to open up before us. We could tentatively call it ‘Institutional Economics of Gift’.
Acknowledgements. This article is the result of a common effort and a continuous dialogue between the three authors.
More in particular, Ioana Negru has written Sections 1 and 2, Stefan Kesting Section 3 and Paolo Silvestri Section 4,
while abstract and conclusions are the result of a three-handed writing. The authors wish to thank Professor Geoffrey
M. Hodgson for helpful comments on various drafts of this Introduction.
Financial support. Ioana Negru acknowledges support by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu & Hasso Plattner Foundation
research grants LBUS-IRG-2019-05. Paolo Silvestri acknowledges funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie
Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement no. 609305.
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Cite this article: Kesting S, Negru I, Silvestri P (2020). Institutional analysis and the gift: an introduction to the symposium.
Journal of Institutional Economics 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137420000223
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