Economics Working Paper Archive at WUSTL
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Опубликовано на портале: 05-02-2003
Douglass C. North
Economics Working Paper Archive at WUSTL.
1993.
North outlines five propositions about institutional change and explains its meanings.
He lays out a specific agenda for the study of institutions that is different from
game theoretic or spatial political modeling of institutions. The focus is a transaction
cost approach to institutions and a cognitive science approach to "rational" choice.
While the former--the transaction cost approach--is at least partly complementary
to game theoretic approaches, the latter suggests a distinct departure from much
of the current rational choice theory.



Опубликовано на портале: 05-02-2003
Arthur T. Denzau, Douglass C. North
Economics Working Paper Archive at WUSTL.
1993.
Denzau and North argue that ideas matter, and that the way that ideas are communicated
among people is crucial to building useful theories that will enable us to deal with
strong uncertainty problems at the individual level. Under conditions of uncertainty,
individuals' interpretation of their environment will reflect the learning that they
have undergone. Individuals with common cultural backgrounds and experiences will
share reasonably convergent mental models, ideologies and institutions and individuals
with different learning experiences (both cultural and environmental) will have different
theories (models, ideologies) to interpret that environment. It is the argument of
this essay that in order to understand decision making under such conditions of uncertainty
we must understand the relationship between the mental models that individuals construct
to make sense out of the world around them, the ideologies that evolve from such
constructions, and the institutions that develop in a society to order interpersonal
relationships.


