This paper examines the concept of decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), blockchain-based entities intended to operate without central authority or management hierarchy, through the lens of organisational economics. It compares DAOs with conventional organisational forms and explores...

Can theologians, philosophers and economists have a fruitful conversation about human flourishing? In practice, that does not appear to be so easy. Nevertheless, I believe it is worthwhile to bring knowledge from different disciplines into conversation. In doing so, I choose an approach that...

Transaction cost economics (TCE) and the theory of governance structures developed by Oliver Williamson have demonstrated significant explanatory power across institutional economics, law and economics, public policy, and strategic management. This review evaluates the predictive potential of...

Institutional analysis of rural development (IARD) is characterised by systematic attention given to the institutional dimensions of the rural development process. While different research enquiries have been developed in recent decades, which can be framed by rural development, a systematic...

Purpose The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor. Design/methodology/approach The author approaches the discussion using a...

The experimental literature on preferences for redistribution has established that individual perceptions of what earning distributions are fair depend greatly on context. In this paper, we study an important and novel dimension of context: whether the choice to redistribute occurs before...

The Blue Economy in Africa, with its extensive aquatic and marine resources, is expected to play a major role in the continent's climate adaptation. It presents distinct opportunities to generate jobs and encourage economic growth while addressing the concerns of food security and climate...

This study investigates how institutional rules and fairness in enforcement affect cooperation and compliance in heterogenous groups. In a preregistered online experiment (n = 1, 254), we vary both the existence of a rule governing contributions to a public good as well as whether enforcement of...

Taking inspiration from the work of Douglass North, much institutional research attempts a distinction between 'formal' and 'informal' institutions. North often associated 'formal institutions' with rules enforced through a legal system. It is suggested here that this lead should be followed and...

National innovation systems (NISs) have been important in the literature since the 1990s for highlighting the institutional performance of economies and promoting economic development. Inclusion in systemic innovation activities is an emerging area of research. However, the definition of...

Crises constitute a fascinating context in which to investigate the resilience of institutional arrangements, or their breakdown and change, and to shed light on the interplay between formal and informal institutions in this process. The papers in this symposium focus on crises from political...

We propose a framework for institutional change in the 'rules-in-equilibrium' tradition and introduce the term institutional incompleteness. Institutions are incomplete when their constituent rules fail to induce behavioural beliefs about the strategies of others and hence fail to achieve an...

Prominent scholars have complained of inadequate clarity and agreement on what transactions are, and how their costs are measured. This two-part article explores this topic and suggests an alternative approach. This part examines different meanings of transaction cost used by leading scholars in...

This paper investigates how institutional and social trust respond to crisis situations, and to what extent different kinds of trust interact in such a context. In an online survey experiment on 4,400 representative respondents from Italy, participants are exposed to a real-world flooding...

Sustainability has gained increased importance in business schools, yet its full institutionalization within the curricula remains challenging. To address this gap, business schools are increasingly collaborating with alternative organizations, such as B Corporations. However, the factors...

The project 'Building capacity for evidence-informed policymaking in governance and public administration in a post-pandemic Europe' was inspired by the need of Member States to respond to complex policy issues requiring specialised knowledge, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to a...

This paper compares the inter-war 1930s with the post-2014 international system to identify structural continuities that threaten contemporary stability. A tri-layer literature review integrates archival records, modern governmental datasets and global opinion surveys, normalising disparate...

This essay aims to address the existing theoretical gap regarding the in-depth study of institutional change and its relationship with the endogenous development potential of regions. The intersection of these two theoretical approaches offers an understanding of how changes in formal and...