The 38 selections in the volume include complete texts of all of Veblen's major articles and book reviews from 1882 to 1914, plus key chapters from his books The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) and The Instinct of Workmanship (1914). These writings present a wide range of Veblen's most significant contributions, especially with respect to the philosophical and psychological foundations of economics, sociology, and other social sciences. A thorougly comprehensive volume, this is the only collection to present Veblen's writings in chronological order, so that their development can be correctly understood. The volume is edited by a leading sociologist and a prominent economist, who provide extensive introductory essays which include item-by-item commentaries that place each selection in its intellectual-historical context and in relation to subsequent developments in economics. It makes for a valuable source of reference both for students and researchers alike.

A collection of essays, this book spans Marxian and Sraffian economics on the one hand and institutional economics on the other. Recent events in eastern Europe have underlined the limitations of Marxian economic and political theory. Hodgson subjects Marxian economic theory to critical examination and shows which elements retain their modern relevance. After considering the contribution of Sraffa's work and indicating both its critical potential and theoretical limitations, he points to a new synthesis which embraces Marx, Keynes and Veblen.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall we have been told that no alternative to Western capitalism is possible or desirable. This book challenges this view with two arguments. First, the above premise ignores the enormous variety within capitalism itself. Second, there are enormous forces of transformation within contemporary capitalisms, associated with moves towards a more knowledge-intensive economy. These forces challenge the traditional bases of contract and employment, and could lead to a quite different socio-economic system. Without proposing a static blueprint, this book explores this possible scenario.

This exciting new book from Geoffrey Hodgson is eagerly awaited by social scientists from many different backgrounds. This book charts the rise, fall and renewal of institutional economics in the critical, analytical and readable style that Hodgson's fans have come to know and love, and that a new generation of readers will surely come to appreciate.

This exciting new book from Geoffrey Hodgson is eagerly awaited by social scientists from many different backgrounds. This book charts the rise, fall and renewal of institutional economics in the critical, analytical and readable style that Hodgson's fans have come to know and love, and that a new generation of readers will surely come to appreciate.

In arguably his most important book to date, Hodgson calls into question the tendency of economic method to try and explain all economic phenomena by using the same catch-all theories and dealing in universal truths. He argues that you need different theories to analyse different economic phenomena and systems and that historical context must be taken into account.

Hodgson argues that the German Historical School was key in laying the foundations for the work of the pioneer institutional economists, who themselves are gaining currency today; and that the growing interest in this school of thought is contributing to a more complete understanding of socio-economic theory.

In arguably his most important book to date, Hodgson calls into question the tendency of economic method to try and explain all economic phenomena by using the same catch-all theories and dealing in universal truths. He argues that you need different theories to analyse different economic phenomena and systems and that historical context must be taken into account.

Hodgson refers widely to the work of the unfairly neglected German Historical School to make his point. This school has been severely under-rated by mainstream economists and dismissed as scientific. However, there is growing interest in their work and they can be seen as laying the foundations for the work of the pioneer institutional economists, who themselves are gaining currency today.

For many the East European revolutions of 1989 and the disintegration of the USSR represented not only the overdue demise of Soviet-style communism, but also the obsolescence of all utopian ways of thinking. This text argues history has reached its end-state in the form of a victorious liberal-democratic capitalism and all attempts to imagine an alternative social order were now damned as both futile and quixotic. Beyond Utopia? rejects the belief that utopian thinking is a necessary condition for the development of alternative solutions to the problems of the present and thus for historical progress. This text is emphatically not an attempt to breathe new life into existing utopian models, whether state socialist or neo-liberal, which are seen as misunderstanding the nature of learning and knowledge in a modern economy. The author's utopianism is based on an examination of the potential for an alternative future based on the growth of knowledge-intensive production, one whose feasibility would derive from its ability to respond to the needs of rapidly-changing industrial economies.

The 38 selections in the volume include complete texts of all of Veblen's major articles and book reviews from 1882 to 1914, plus key chapters from his books The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) and The Instinct of Workmanship (1914). These writings present a wide range of Veblen's most significant contributions, especially with respect to the philosophical and psychological foundations of economics, sociology, and other social sciences. A thorougly comprehensive volume, this is the only collection to present Veblen's writings in chronological order, so that their development can be correctly understood. The volume is edited by a leading sociologist and a prominent economist, who provide extensive introductory essays which include item-by-item commentaries that place each selection in its intellectual-historical context and in relation to subsequent developments in economics. It makes for a valuable source of reference both for students and researchers alike. .

How the development of legal and financial institutions transformed Britain into the world’s first capitalist country Modern capitalism emerged in England in the eighteenth century and ushered in the Industrial Revolution, though scholars have long debated why. Some attribute the causes to technological change while others point to the Protestant ethic, liberal ideas, and cultural change. The Wealth of a Nation reveals the crucial developments in legal and financial institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that help to explain this dramatic transformation. Offering new perspectives on the early history of capitalism, Geoffrey Hodgson describes how, for the emerging British economy, pressures from without were as important as evolution from within. He shows how intensive military conflicts overseas forced the state to undertake major financial, administrative, legal, and political reforms. The resulting institutional changes not only bolstered the British war machine—they fostered the Industrial Revolution. Hodgson traces how Britain’s war capitalism led to an expansion of its empire and a staggering increase in the slave trade, and how the institutional innovations that radically transformed the British economy were copied and adapted by countries around the world. A landmark work of scholarship, The Wealth of a Nation sheds light on how external factors such as war gave rise to institutional arrangements that facilitated finance, banking, and investment, and offers a conceptual framework for further research into the origins and consolidation of capitalism in England.

This Element examines the historical emergence of evolutionary economics, its development into a strong research theme after 1980, and how it has hosted a diverse set of approaches. Its focus on complexity, economic dynamics and bounded rationality is underlined. Its core ideas are compared with those of mainstream economics. But while evolutionary economics has inspired research in a number of areas in business studies and social science, these have become specialized and fragmented. Evolutionary economics lacks a sufficiently-developed core theory that might promote greater conversation across these fields. A possible unifying framework is generalized Darwinism. Stronger links could also be made with other areas of evolutionary research, such as with evolutionary anthropology and evolutionary psychology. As evolutionary economics has migrated from departments of economics to business schools, institutes of innovation studies and elsewhere, it also needs to address the problem of its lack of a single disciplinary location within academia.