Institutionalism and Value Theory: An Identity Crisis?

Abstract

The literature in institutional economics in recent years reveals considerable, and apparently increasing, theoretical turmoil or contentiousness, along with perhaps a greater than usual lack of cohesion. Some of this could well be ascribed to confusion resulting from the exponential growth of knowledge and information and the rapidity and momentousness of social change as the twentieth century draws to a close. Whatever its cause, it seems warranted to continue to explore the philosophy of institutional thinking and how various currents of thought relate to it.

Provided the practical exigencies ofmodem industriallife continue of the same character as they now are, and so continue 10 enforce the impersonal method of knowledge, it is only a question of time when that (substantially animistic)habit of mind wh ich proceeds on the notion of a definitive nonnality shall be displaced in the field of economic inquiry by that (substantially materialistic)habit of mind which seeks a comprehension of facts in tenns of a cumulative sequence.

Thorstein Veblen