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Transaction Cost Politics in the Map of the New Institutionalism

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Advances in Political Economy

Abstract

In recent decades, the new institutionalism has strongly emerged in social sciences. Institutions have come back to the main research agenda in economics, politics and sociology. This paper presents and analyzes the program of Transaction Cost Politics within the map of the new institutionalism. Transaction Cost Politics constitutes an extension of the New Institutional Economics towards the analysis of politics, and it points out the relevance of institutions in political markets that are characterized by incomplete political rights, imperfect enforcement of agreements, bounded rationality, imperfect information, subjective mental models on the part of the individuals and high transaction costs. The paper reviews the main contributions of Transaction Cost Politics and we study the relationships of Transaction Cost Politics with Rational-Choice Institutionalism, Constitutional Political Economy and the New Institutional Economics.

An initial version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Public Choice Society (USA, 2009). This renewed version was presented in a specialized workshop at the European School for New Institutional Economics (Cargese, France, 2011) and the Second International Conference on Political Economy and Institutions, ICOPEAI (Baiona, Spain, 2012).

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  1. Faculty of Economics, University of Vigo, Campus As Lagoas-Marcosende, 36310, Vigo, Spain

    Gonzalo Caballero & Xosé Carlos Arias

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  1. Gonzalo Caballero
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  2. Xosé Carlos Arias
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Correspondence to Gonzalo Caballero .

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  1. Center in Political Economy, Washington University in St.Louis, Brookings Drive 1, Saint Louis, 63130, Missouri, USA

    Norman Schofield

  2. , Faculty of Economics, University of Vigo, Lagoas Marcosende, Vigo, 36310, Spain

    Gonzalo Caballero

  3. Centro de Estudios Avanzados, en Ciencias Sociales, Juan March Institute, Calle Castelló 77, Madrid, 28006, Spain

    Daniel Kselman

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Caballero, G., Arias, X.C. (2013). Transaction Cost Politics in the Map of the New Institutionalism. In: Schofield, N., Caballero, G., Kselman, D. (eds) Advances in Political Economy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35239-3_1

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