Jamee K. Moudud – författare

“Institutions matter” is a common refrain among all economists—including many who have proposed progressive alternatives to free market fundamentalism. However, this sentiment does not go far enough.

This book draws principally on the Original Institutional Economics and American Legal Realist traditions to propose a theory of legal institutionalism or institutional political economy. By arguing that society is a political community it challenges the private law versus public law or state versus markets distinction. Focusing on property, money and credit, constitutional law, and corporations this book argues that laissez-faire has never existed and that “state intervention versus de-regulation” and “market failures versus free markets” are false dichotomies. This book proposes the need to engage with legal-economic theory and history to understand what institutions are, what economic regulation means, law’s intrinsic connection to the economy, and the distribution of power relations within capitalism.

This book will be of interest to readers of economics, law, public policy, international and development studies, and all those seeking to explore progressive alternatives in this period of multiple crises.

“Institutions matter” is a common refrain among all economists—including many who have proposed progressive alternatives to free market fundamentalism. However, this sentiment does not go far enough.

This book draws principally on the Original Institutional Economics and American Legal Realist traditions to propose a theory of legal institutionalism or institutional political economy. By arguing that society is a political community it challenges the private law versus public law or state versus markets distinction. Focusing on property, money and credit, constitutional law, and corporations this book argues that laissez-faire has never existed and that “state intervention versus de-regulation” and “market failures versus free markets” are false dichotomies. This book proposes the need to engage with legal-economic theory and history to understand what institutions are, what economic regulation means, law’s intrinsic connection to the economy, and the distribution of power relations within capitalism.

This book will be of interest to readers of economics, law, public policy, international and development studies, and all those seeking to explore progressive alternatives in this period of multiple crises.

The history of policymaking has been dominated by two rival assumptions about markets. Those who have advocated Keynesian-type policies have generally based their arguments on the claim that markets are imperfectly competitive. On the other hand laissez faire advocates have argued the opposite by claiming that in fact free market policies will eliminate "market imperfections" and reinvigorate perfect competition. The goal of this book is to enter into this important debate by raising critical questions about the nature of market competition.

Drawing on the insights of the classical political economists, Schumpeter, Hayek, the Oxford Economists’ Research Group (OERG) and others, the authors in this book challenge this perfect versus imperfect competition dichotomy in both theoretical and empirical terms. There are important differences between the theoretical perspectives of several authors in the broad alternative theoretical tradition defined by this book; nevertheless, a unifying theme throughout this volume is that competition is conceptualized as a dynamic disequilibrium process rather than the static equilibrium state of conventional theory. For almost all the others the growth of firm is consistent with a heightened degree of competitiveness, as both Marx and Schumpeter emphasized, and not a lowered one as in the conventional ''monopoly capital'' view.

The history of policymaking has been dominated by two rival assumptions about markets. Those who have advocated Keynesian-type policies have generally based their arguments on the claim that markets are imperfectly competitive. On the other hand laissez faire advocates have argued the opposite by claiming that in fact free market policies will eliminate "market imperfections" and reinvigorate perfect competition. The goal of this book is to enter into this important debate by raising critical questions about the nature of market competition.

Drawing on the insights of the classical political economists, Schumpeter, Hayek, the Oxford Economists’ Research Group (OERG) and others, the authors in this book challenge this perfect versus imperfect competition dichotomy in both theoretical and empirical terms. There are important differences between the theoretical perspectives of several authors in the broad alternative theoretical tradition defined by this book; nevertheless, a unifying theme throughout this volume is that competition is conceptualized as a dynamic disequilibrium process rather than the static equilibrium state of conventional theory. For almost all the others the growth of firm is consistent with a heightened degree of competitiveness, as both Marx and Schumpeter emphasized, and not a lowered one as in the conventional ''monopoly capital'' view.