Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 09:29:07 -0500 From: Jon Mote <jmote@sas.upenn.edu> Reply-To: economic_sociology@listserv.asanet.org To: Economic Sociology Discussion List <economic_sociology@listserv.asanet.org> Subject: ECONSOC Editorial: How Institutional Economics is Killing Micro-Economics It is my pleasure to present the fifth guest editorial of the 2000-2001 school-year. This editorial is contributed by Professor Frank Dobbin, Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. Professor Dobbin is the author of Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain and France in the Railway Age (1994). Recent articles by Professor Dobbin chart the effects of antitrust policy on business strategy and the effects of equal opportunity law on personnel management. I encourage everyone on the list to respond to Professor Dobbin's editorial. Jonathon E. Mote Department of Sociology University of Pennsylvania (currently residing in Iowa City) jmote@sas.upenn.edu http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jmote/ ************************************************************************ *********************************************************** How Institutional Economics is Killing Micro-economics Frank Dobbin Princeton University Over the last decade, sociological and economic institutionalists have begun to converge on a view of how institutions shape individual behavior. The two broad kinds of institutionalism -- economic and rational choice institutionalism, on the one hand, and historical and sociological institutionalism, on the other had begun with very different theories of action (Hall and Taylor 1996; Thelen and Steinmo 1992; Campbell 1998; Scott 2001). Economists such as Oliver Williamson (1985) and Douglass North (1981) were building a theory on the foundation of micro-economics -- that dismal science that makes greed the motive behind all human behavior. Historical and sociological institutionalists not only depicted individual behavior as driven by other forces than self-interest; they rejected methodological individualism altogether, challenging the idea that society emerges from the hard-wired behavioral patterns of PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory trial version www.pdffactory.com