Aoki on Institutional Change

5 March 2007 at 4:25 pm Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

The April 2007 issue of the Journal of Institutional Economics (3:1) features Masahiko Aoki’s paper “Endogenizing Institutions and Institutional Changes.” Abstract:

This paper proposes an analytical-cum-conceptual framework for understanding the nature of institutions as well as their changes. First, it proposes a new definition of institution based on the notion of common knowledge regarding self-sustaining features of social interactions with a hope to integrate various disciplinary approaches to institutions and their changes. Second, it specifies some generic mechanisms of institutional coherence and change — overlapping social embeddedness, Schumpeterian innovation in bundling games, and dynamic institutional complementarities — useful for understanding the dynamic interactions of economic, political, social, organizational, and cognitive factors.

Other papers from the same issue that look interesting include “Hayek and Popper on Ignorance and Intervention” by Celia Lessa Kerstenetzky, “Why Are Cooperatives Important in Agriculture? An Organizational Economics Perspective” by Vadislav Valentinov, and David Reisman’s review of Richard Swedberg’s New Developments in Economic Sociology.