جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "نهادگرایی قدیم" در نشریات گروه "علوم انسانی"

In the arena of Economic thought, there has always been some intellectual confrontation between the two major economic schools, i.e. Institutionalism and Neoclassical economics. This challenge has taken place at different levels; ranging from the most fundamental levels which are principles of ontology and epistemology to higher levels of policy implications. This article is an attempt to address some of the aspects of this debate and the challenges created by it.Neoclassical advocates claim that institutionalism suffers from lack of theory. Indeed, they try to nullify institutionalism as non-scientific school. But, suddenly these questions arise that "what is science, and what can be considered as science at all?" "Is neoclassical economics science and institutional economics not?" These questions are among the issues which are addressed in this article. It will be shown in this article that institutionalism has an important core of economic theories that turns it to a powerful paradigm. But, in order to understand this, we have to go beyond what is considered theory in neoclassical school. Furthermore we will go through other claims that these two schools hold against each other and address some of them such as realism, scope and precision of theory, and solidarity of paradigm. We will show that in some of these areas such as perception of reality and realism, the difference between these two schools of thought is essential.

“Institutions matter”. This is what we now see repeatedly in economic texts. But, some economists mentioned this truth more than a century ago. By asserting that mainstream economics has ignored institutions, these economists established a new paradigm, named institutional economics, which was, according to their manifesto, “the only way to the right sort of theory.” The crucial point, however, was that this new paradigm was introducing a critical element as the main unit of analysis that could well destroy all aspects of conventional economics. Now, more than one hundred years after the beginning of institutional economics, the science of economics has witnessed many valuable endeavors to imbed institutions in economic analysis. Although valuable, but these efforts has made the concept of institutions more complicated. Indeed, as mentioned by J. R. Commons, from the early stages of the evolution of institutionalism, this concept was tangled. However, after the emergence of New Institutional Economics, we can see more difficulties. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the meaning and concept of institutions and its relation with individuals. Another issue that this paper is going to shed some light on it, is the role of institutions in economic occasions. Finally, the paper will concentrate on one important and neglected question, which was the main source of Veblen’s attack on orthodoxy, that is, why did mainstream economics ignore institutions?