I argue that it is useful to think about the optimal design of monetary institutions using the insights from the theory of incomplete contracts. The core of the monetary policy problem is the uncertainty about future social decisions resulting from the impossibility and the undesirability of...

Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions? An extension of the Coase theorem to politics would suggest the answer is no. This paper discusses various approaches to political economy and develops the argument that there are strong empirical and theoretical grounds for believing...

Bioprospection practices have proliferated as biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies engage in the collection and genetic screening of biological and genetic resources throughout the world. The purpose of this article is to examine the competing proposals for the institutional framing of...

This article develops the framework of comparative institutional analysis for assessing the implications of judicial interpretation in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The analytical framework offers an improved means to describe and assess the consequences of choices made in treaty drafting...

Research summary: We use a novel theoretical framework to synthesize ostensibly disparate streams of non-market strategy research. We argue that faced with weak institutions, firms can create and appropriate value by either adapting to, augmenting, or transforming the existing institutional...

This paper examines alternative frameworks for empirical analysis of supply side activities, namely, the manufacture and distribution of medicine, through the application of New Institutional Economics (NIE) concepts. Attention is focused particularly upon the potential utility of ideas from...

Financial institutions have both investors and customers. Investors, such as those who invest in stocks and bonds or private/public-sector guarantors of institutions, expect an appropriate risk-adjusted return in exchange for the financing and risk-bearing that they provide. Customers of a...

We construct a model of simultaneous change and persistence in institutions. The model consists of landowning elites and workers, and the key economic decision concerns the form of economic institutions regulating the transaction of labor (e.g., competitive markets versus labor repression). The...

The paper uses the farm problem theory as the framework for comparative analysis of cooperative, market and hierarchical organization in the agrifood system. In order to conduct this analysis, the paper proposes the organizational economics approach to the farm problem which supplements the...