The use of economics to study law was pioneered by the Austrian School of Economics. The nineteenth century founders of the school believed that economics could contribute to understanding the spontaneous development of common law as well as the nature of legal rights. For this insightful...

Capitalism has outperformed all other systems and maintained a positive growth rate since it began. Svetozar Pejovich makes the case within this book that a major reason for the success of capitalism lies in the efficiency-friendly incentives of its basic institutions, which continuously adjust...

'This is a wonderfully subversive book that should be essential reading for all students of urban planning. Cities evolve under the influence of multiple individual land development plans. Coordination between these can happen to varying degrees, at various spatial scales, under the leadership...

Martin Ricketts, a leading scholar in this field, has selected the seminal papers from a variety of traditions that illustrate the evolution of thinking on 'the firm' over a considerable period of time. The firm as a vehicle for entrepreneurial initiative and the exercise of business judgement...

This volume investigates the relationship between economic globalization and institutions, or global governance, challenging the common assumption that globalization and institutionalization are essentially processes which exclude each other. Instead, the contributors to this book show that...

In Human Nature and Organization Theory, Sigmund Wagner-Tsukamoto challenges the conventional wisdom that (organizational) economics is an amoral and empirically incorrect science. He treads new ground regarding the behavioural portrayal of human nature in organization theory

This thorough and comprehensive book examines the role that institutions play in economic life. The discussion begins with common values, shared traditions and individual habits which have their roots in the past. It goes on to consider consumer preferences, needs and wants, altruism,...

Recent years have seen the development of new theories of market failure based on asymmetric information and network effects. According to the new paradigm, we can expect substantial failure in the markets for labor, credit, insurance, software, new technologies and even used cars, to give but a...

Building on Oliver Williamson's original analysis, the contributors introduce new ideas, different perspectives and provide tools for better understanding changes in the approach to regulation, the reform of public utilities, and the complex problems of governance. They draw largely upon a...

Realizing institutions and regulations that foster economic growth is an essential asset for contemporary economies. This book investigates practices and options for steering individual and firm behaviour that prevents unacceptable externalities and boosts public interests. These...