The Ronald Coase Institute is inaugurating a lecture and book series on new institutional economics that will be published by Cambridge University Press. The founding editors are Alexandra Benham, Lee Benham, and Mary Shirley. Four inaugural volumes are underway.
Ronald Coase, Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom, Oliver Williamson, and many subsequent scholars have shown that institutions - laws, rules, norms and culture - are essential to understanding economic phenomena. Much empirical research has confirmed the significance of institutions for firms, organizations, legal systems, states, and societies. This research has made clear the central roles played by transaction costs, property rights, contracts, and the rule of law.
In this new series, volumes will synthesize the rich results and patterns that emerge from this body of institutional research. These volumes will integrate innovative ideas to examine links across themes. They will consider how specific institutions matter for growth and development, why certain institutions play a major role in some circumstances and not in others, why different institutions persist and why they change, how cognitive and contextual factors influence firms’ governance and contractual choices, and more. This new series will provide an outlet for broad-ranging analyses with the extensive contextual material that institutional investigations need.
The advisory board for this series will help to identify innovative themes, recruit new authors, review proposals, and promote the series. Advisory board members are Paulo Furquim de Azevedo, Brazil; Sebastian Galiani, USA; Cheryl Xiaoning Long, China; Claude Menard, France; Michael Rochlitz, Germany; and Maroš Servátka, Australia.
The inaugural volumes in this series will be:
Douglas W. Allen and Bryan Leonard, Why The Rush? An Institutional Economic Analysis of Homesteading and the Settlement of the West
Gary Libecap, Where's Coase? The Implications of Economic Property Rights or Rent-Seeking in Forming Institutions
Sebastian Galiani and Gustavo Torrens, Endogenous Institutions: Roles and Determinants
Dean Lueck, The Governance of Wildlife: An Economic Saga of Man and Beast
Robert Fleck and Andrew Hanssen, The Ancient Greeks: Masters of Institutional Design
For more information, contact: submissions at coase.org.