Hybrid governance structures between markets and hierarchies in many industries, e.g., in energy and telecommunications, challenge antitrust and regulation policy. The paper focusses on the theoretical and methodological basis provided by the New Institutional Economics (NIE) for analyzing the...

Ireland's loan funds were a long-lived, self-sustaining, large-scale microfinance organization that made millions of loans, without collateral, to the poor. During the first hundred years of their life-cycle, a period of growth ending in the 1840s, they adapted constantly and obtained...

We formalize the difference between profit‐maximizing firms, nonprofits, and cooperatives and identify optimal organizational choice in a model of quality provision. Firms provide lowest and nonprofits highest levels of quality. Efficiency, however, depends on the competitive environment, the...

Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions, in contrast to what would be suggested by a reasoning extending the Coase Theorem to politics? Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions because of differences in the beliefs and ideologies of their peoples or leaders? Or...

After twenty-five years in the legislative mill, the Philippine Competition Act (PCA) was enacted into law in 2015, which established a national competition authority. But whether this law will truly change the landscape of competition in the market is an ambitious antitrust vision that requires...

Prepared for the "Handbook Of New Institutional Economics." Focusing on firm behavior, the paper examines the collapse of socialist institutions, the building of capitalist institutions, changing firm boundaries, transactional governance, corporate governance, and use of the legal system. The...

Change in the commons remains poorly understood. This essay analyzes a comparative case study of community forestry in Mexico. In a primary case study, corruption in a community-owned logging business legitimates timber smuggling, and this situation contrasts with several forestry communities...

The paper explores the potential link between Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and the theoretical developments associated with New Institutional Economics (NIE). The emphasis is put in particular on the contributions of two Nobel Prize winners in economics, Douglass C. North and Elinor Ostrom,...

This paper employs New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics to analyze Bulgarian agriculture. It evaluates the efficiency of dominant governing forms on the eve of EU accession, and assesses the likely impact of CAP implementation on farming structures. Firstly, assessment is made on...

Normative constitutional theory asks at least two distinct questions: How should judges and other officials approach constitutional decision-making? And what counts as a good reason — or “normative foundation” — for adopting a particular approach? The two questions are obviously related,...