Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Veblen's Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Part One Norwegian Origins and Personal Life
- Part Two American Education
- Part Three Veblen's Politics
- Part Four Veblen's Economics
- 12 Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics
- 13 Veblen's Words Weighed
- 14 The Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise, Keynes's Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis
- 15 Predation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference
- 16 Capitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste
- 17 Thorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important Now than Ever
- Name Index
- Subject Index
12 - Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics
from Part Four - Veblen's Economics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Veblen's Contexts: Valdres, Norway and Europe; Filiations of Economics; and Economics for an Age of Crises
- Part One Norwegian Origins and Personal Life
- Part Two American Education
- Part Three Veblen's Politics
- Part Four Veblen's Economics
- 12 Thorstein Veblen: The Father of Evolutionary and Institutional Economics
- 13 Veblen's Words Weighed
- 14 The Great Crash of 2007 Viewed through the Perspective of Veblen's Theory of Business Enterprise, Keynes's Monetary Theory of Production and Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis
- 15 Predation from Veblen until Now: Remarks to the Veblen Sesquicentennial Conference
- 16 Capitalising Expectations: Veblen on Consumption, Crises and the Utility of Waste
- 17 Thorstein Veblen: Still Misunderstood, but More Important Now than Ever
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Being ‘institutional’ and ‘evolutionary’ is currently fashionable for economists. Since the early 1990s, almost every economist has learned to stress the importance of institutions and several Nobel Prizes have been awarded to institutionalists, including Ronald Coase, Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. Evolutionary themes pervade game theory and other approaches in mainstream economics. We are all institutional and evolutionary economists now.
Of course, these widely shared terms obscure a variety of different basic assumptions and approaches. There is also no unanimity on what ‘institutions’ are and what ‘evolution’ means. Given the broad coverage of these terms, it is also possible to point to a wide variety of progenitors. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Carl Menger, Alfred Marshall, Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek and others were all, in a meaningful sense, evolutionary economists; they all developed an understanding of the dynamic processes of structural change. They all, furthermore, paid much attention to the effects of social institutions on economic performance. Accordingly, evolutionary and institutional economics as found today have a rich variety of ancestors, in part accounting for the diversity of contemporary approaches.
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- Information
- Thorstein VeblenEconomics for an Age of Crises, pp. 283 - 296Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012
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