Introductory Reading List
in New Institutional Economics

Overview
Eggertsson, Thrainn, Economic Behavior and Institutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Furubotn, Eirik G. and Rudolf Richter, Institutions and Economic Theory: The Contribution of the New Institutional Economics, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997.

Menard, Claude and Shirley, Mary M., eds, Handbook of New institutional Economics, Dordrecht: Springer, 2005.


Transaction Cost Perspective
Coase, Ronald, "The Nature of The Firm," Economica, November 1937, pp. 386-495. Reprinted in Boulding, Kenneth, Readings in Price Theory, 1952, pp. 331-351;
and in Coase, R. H., The Firm, the Market and the Law, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 33-55; and in Williamson, O. and Winter, S., eds., The Nature of the Firm: Origins, Evolution and Development, Oxford University Press, 1991.

Coase, Ronald, "The Problem of Social Costs," Journal of Law and Economics, October 1960, pp. 1-44.  Reprinted in Henry G. Manne, ed., The Economics of Legal Relationships, West Publishing, 1975; and in Breit, W., Hochman, H., and Saueracker E., Readings in Microeconomics, Times Mirror Publishing, 1986, pp. 414-440; and in Coase, R. H., The Firm, the Market and the Law, The University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Coase, Ronald, "How Should Economists Choose?", the G. Warren Nutter Lectures in Political Economy, published by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1982. Reprinted in Coase, R.H., Essays on Economics and Economists, The University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 15-33.

Coase, Ronald H., The Firm, the Market and the Law, The University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Alchian, Armen A. and Demsetz, Harold, “Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization,” American Economic Review 62:5 (December 1972), pp. 777-795.

Ostrom, Elinor, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, 1990

Williamson, Oliver, "Franchise Bidding for Natural Monopolies – in General and with Respect to CATV," The Bell Journal of Economics, 7 (Spring 1976), pp. 73-104.

Williamson, Oliver, "Transaction Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractual Relations," Journal of Law and Economics, 22 (October 1979), pp. 233-261

Williamson, Oliver, "Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange," American Economic Review, 73 (September 1983), pp. 519-40.

Williamson, Oliver, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting, New York: The Free Press, 1985.

Williamson, O. and Winter, S., editors, The Nature of the Firm: Origins, Evolution and Development, Oxford University Press, 1991.

Williamson, Oliver E.. and Masten, Scott E., editors, The Economics of Transaction Costs, Edward Elgar Publishing, 1999.

Williamson, Oliver, "The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead," Journal of Economic Literature, 38 (September 2000), pp. 595-613.


Historical and Political Economy Perspective
North, Douglass. C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

North, Douglass C., "Institutions," The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5:1 (Winter 1991), pp. 97-112.

North, Douglass C., "New Institutional Economics and Development." 1993 working paper (PDF file).

North, Douglass C., "Economic Performance Through Time," The American Economic Review, 84 (June 1994), pp. 359-368.

North, Douglass C., "Five Propositions about Institutional Change," in Explaining Social Institutions, Jack Knight and Itai Sened, eds., University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 15-26.

North, Douglass C., "Understanding Economic Change," in Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies, Joan M. Nelson, Charles Tilly and Lee Walker, eds., Washington D. C.: National Academy Press, 1997, pp. 13-18.

Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge MA; Harvard University Press, 1965.
 

Applications
Alston, Lee, Gary Libecap, and Bernardo Mueller, Titles, Conflict and Land Use: The Development of Property Rights and Land Reform on the Brazilian Amazon Frontier, University of Michigan Press, 1998.

Alston, Lee J., Eggertsson, Thrainn, and North, Douglass C., eds. Empirical Studies in Institutional Change, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1996.

Benham, Alexandra and Lee Benham, "Property Rights in Transition Economies: A Commentary on What Economists Know," in Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies, Joan M. Nelson, Charles Tilly and Lee Walker, eds., Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1997.

Benham, Alexandra and Lee Benham, "Measuring the Costs of Exchange," in Ménard, Claude, editor, Institutions, Contracts and Organizations: Perspectives from New Institutional Economics, Edward Elgar, 2000, pp. 367-375.

Coase, Ronald, "The Lighthouse in Economics," The Journal of Law and Economics, 17:2 (October 1974), pp. 357-376. Reprinted in Coase, R. H., The Firm, the Market and the Law, The University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Keefer, Philip and Stephen Knack, "Why Don’t Poor Countries Catch Up: A Cross National Test of an Institutional Explanation," Economic Inquiry, 35:3 (July 1997), pp. 590-602.

Levy, Brian and Pablo Spiller, "The Institutional Foundations of Regulatory Commitment: A Comparative Analysis of Telecommunications Regulation," The Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, October 1994, pp. 201-246.

Masten, Scott, editor, Case Studies in Contracting and Organization, Oxford Press, 1988.

Ménard, Claude, editor, Institutions, Contracts and Organizations: Perspectives from New Institutional Economics, Edward Elgar, 2000.

North, Douglass C. and Barry R. Weingast, "Constitutions and Commitments: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, 49:4 (December 1989). Reprinted in Empirical Studies in Institutional Change, Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertsson, and Douglass C. North, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Stone, Andrew, Brian Levy and Ricardo Parades, "Public Institutions and Private Transactions: A Comparative Analysis of the Legal and Regulatory Environment for Business Transactions in Brazil and Chile" in Empirical Studies in Institutional Change, Lee J. Alston, Thrainn Eggertsson, Douglass C. North, eds., Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 95-128.

Wallis, John J. and Douglass C. North, "Measuring the Transaction Sector in the American Economy, 1870-1970," in Engermann, Stanley and Robert Gallman, eds., Income and Wealth: Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

World Bank (team led by Mary Shirley), Bureaucrats in Business: The Economics and Politics of Government Ownership, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.


Other
Alchian, Armen A., "Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory," Journal of Political Economy, 58:3 (June 1950), pp. 211-221; also in American Economic Association, Hefflebower and Stocking, eds., Readings in Industrial Organization and Public Policy, pp. 457-476.

Barzel, Yoram. Economic Analysis of Property Rights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Demsetz, Harold, "Toward a Theory of Property Rights," American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings of the Seventy-ninth Annual Meeting, 57:2 (May 1967), pp. 347-359. Reprinted in Furubotn, Eirik, and Pejovich, Svetozar, eds., The Economics of Property Rights, Ballinger, 1974.

Hayek, F. A., " The Use of Knowledge in Society," American Economic Review, 35:4 (September 1945) pp. 519-530.

Sened, Itai, The Political Institution of Private Property, Cambridge University Press, pp. 76-132.

Tullock, Gordon, "The Transitional Gains Trap," Bell Journal, 6 (Autumn 1975), pp. 671-678.