Open research questions in Economic Theory and Institutions
49 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,200 Economic Theory and Institutions papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.
What the literature leaves open
Relatively little is known about the relationship between Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian school of economics, and his son, Karl Menger, the mathematician, geometer, logician, and philosopher of science, whose mathematical colloquium at the University of Vienna was essential for the development of mathematical economics.
The article defines the concept of economic mentality as informal institution, analyzes the basic approaches to the interpretation of this category in institutional theory, the structure of the institutional environment, indicates the place and role of economic mentality in the system of institutional factors of economic development, outlines the prospects for further research of this problem.
ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter treats several immensely important and understudied topics—public ignorance of economics, political ideology, and their connection to policy error—from an orthodox economic perspective whose applicability to these topics is overwhelmingly disproven by the available evidence.
Among the 90 private managers in this Institutional 100, nearly every firm manages both mutual funds and pension funds, though the relative importance of each varies widely.
Reflections on "Toward Common Sense and Common Ground?" · 2007While a considerable body of empirical investigations seems to provide evidence of positive correlations between stock market development and economic growth, there is no consensus in other social sciences as to whether there are two‐way linkages, and if so, how to conceive a possible mechanism of interaction.
The present paper critically reviews works in this area by Alchian and Demsetz (1972), Williamson (1975, 1980), and Jensen and Meckling (1979), and contends that a convincing efficiency argument for the general superiority of capital owners' over workers' control of enterprises still is lacking.
AS the contradictory evidence gathered by other social scientists has continued to accumulate, two new twists have been added to the methodology of neoclassical economics.
This association as a collective body has a clearcut theoretical image because its membership is largely made up of advocates of a vague evolutionary economics or of a proposed but not clearly defined new general theory of institutionalism regarded as a substitute for mainstream institutionalism regarded as a substitute for mainstream institutionalism.
Specifically, he introduced a new taxonomy and dichotomized costs into two types: (1) cost-means of production or cost-productive-means and (2) cost-specific-means of production Cost-specific-means are those inputs which Downloaded by [Universitaetsbibiothek Bonn] at 01:13 11 March 2015 are scarce or those which were suited only to the production of one product o r a limited number of S products (called specific products).
The Czechoslovak leaders have put through an economic reform based on bold new principles and at the same time have reaffirmed one by one all the orthodox principles of political and social life. However, if the NEM is fully implemented according to its original provisions, there will be greater repercussions than those which the party concedes at present. Until now the NEM has been kept strictly under party control—from the debates to the individual and specific problems of the plan's application. When the market begins to function and replaces the bureaucrat as the economic ruler, the party is liable to find itself one step behind events instead of in the vanguard. For how can people be expected to think rationally about economics and in ideological terms about politics or social relations? Can a society which is economically consumer-oriented be strictly disciplined in politics? How will the leaders be able to control murmuring discontent and nascent opposition? Previously, people were threatened by thé personnel official's control over their employment. Do party chiefs expect a technocrat to fire a productive employee for solely political reasons? And what is the reasoning behind the party's belief that it can win over the young people by stronger ideological training when it has been unable to do so in the past eighteen years under much more favourable conditions for indoctrination? As for political repercussions, the Czechoslovak leaders do not have to look far for an insight into the future. Over a year ago Yugoslavia instituted a far-reaching economic reform, one which was passed in apparent total agreement. But the process of stabilizing the political and social consequences is still going on, and to it can be traced the reshuffling of party posts and the expulsion of Aleksander Rankovic.27 24 Kolder, op. cit. 25 A. Svarovskă, 'Společně s masami v čele mas', Nová mysl, 1966, n o. 13. 26 Frantíšek M o t y č k a, 'Odpovědnost komunisty', Nová mysl, 1966, n o. 3. 27 'The Yugoslav Experiment', Economist, 16 July 1966 (by Yugoslav correspondent). Downloaded by [New York University] at 15:14 23 June 2016 566 DIFFICULTIES IN CZECHOSLOVAK REFORMS The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia will continually be faced with difficult decisions which will demand either a modification of the existing economic, political and social structure or a modification of the principles of the NEM.
Our analysis has already indicated that the finance motive can be 1 Although an analysis of international liquidity problems with planned expansion of world trade is beyond the scope of this paper, it would appear that Keynes's 'Bancor' plan envisaged a different path for solving international liquidity problems (via liquidity supply creating aspects, including overdrafts) than the development of international non-monetary intermediaries suoh as the TM~F and IBRD.
Summary and Conclusions I t should be emphasized that this study involved students in a single school. Therefore, the findings apply only to the general business program in that school. Nevertheless they do indicate what may be learned from this type of evaluation.
Its serviceability is limited to the revelation of inexact, relative, non- causal, quantitative, and probable regularities of a variable mass, whose characteristics a r e exactly defined and strictly limited to a certain period of time arid a specific area (macro-law).
There are today more than eighty professors, of various subjects, in Oxford; in 1825, when Henry Drummond made his benefaction, there were scarcely more than a couple of dozen.
But I do not think it is unfair to state that the net effect of his discus- sion here, however unintentional, is cerfainly to leave the impression that all questions of practice are completely open questions, and that there are no rules of any degree of generality which social science, combined with the utilitarian norms, may enable us to devise. v Jevons' interest in the applicstion of economic theory was not limited to the investigation of the relations of facts ; he was intensely interested in the prescription of policy also.
Lanier, a major but little known investment banker of the 1850’s with whom Henry Poor, the subject of my dissertation, was closely associated.
While government intervention is sometimes necessary to address market failures, its role should always be carefully limited to avoid inefficiency and misalignment with individual preferences.
Milton Friedman's spending matrix revisited: ‘Spending efficiency’ and ‘preference compatibility’ across different economic systems · 2025 · DOII argue that this issue needs to be explored in order to reach a realistic understanding of liberal democratic law (an understanding that Van der Walt aims at).
Second, the tools required to address these problems, including strategic interaction, limited information, principal–agent models, new behavioral foundations, and dynamic processes including instability and path dependence, are available (indeed widely taught in PhD programs).
Abstract Due to the famous methodenstreit it is often well argued that Menger’s approach to social sciences can be seen as anti-historical, as according to him pure empirical studies are insufficient to establish a firm economic theory.
However, economic primacy is an underexplored puzzle for social theory from the perspective of functional differentiation theory, which emphasizes equal autonomy of social subsystems.
] is that their analytical priorities reflect an economics-centric perspective: they prioritize the study of market exchange itself and of agents promoting market framing, while leaving non-economic agendas and the broader contexts of markets both understudied and undertheorized.
Non-marketizing agents in the study of markets: competing legacies of performativity and actor-network-theory in the marketization research program · 2016 · DOII then turn to a discussion of the many arguments that have been put forward in favor of retaining the idealized model of Homo economicus even in the face of apparently contradictory evidence.
This article introduces the special issue on “Relational Work in Market Economies” by explaining the origins of the concept and its value in illuminating a dimension of market activity that has not been systematically addressed by social scientists.
I support my thesis mostly with an archival evidence not explored thus far: some notes deposited at the University of Pittsburgh, here published for the first time.
Most-cited papers in Economic Theory and Institutions
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- Towards a Dynamic Resource-based View: Insights from Austrian Capital and Entrepreneurship Theory · Organization Studies · 2007 · 120 citations
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- Towards a problem-oriented regional industrial policy: possibilities for public intervention in framing, valuation and market formation · Regional Studies · 2022 · 85 citations
- The Roots of Redlining: Academic, Governmental, and Professional Networks in the Making of the New Deal Lending Regime · Journal of American History · 2021 · 78 citations
Most recent work
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- The Entrepreneur in the History of Political Economy: The Hunting for Heffalumps in the Early Economic Analysis · History: Reviews of New Books · 2026
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