Geoffrey Hodgson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Geoffrey Hodgson
Geoffrey Hodgson

Geoffrey M. Hodgson (born 28 July 1946) is a Research Professor of Business Studies in the University of Hertfordshire, and also the head of the Centre for Research in Institutional Economics. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics.

Prof. Hodgson is recognized as one of the leading figures of modern critical institutionalism which carries forth the critical spirit and intellectual tradition of the founders of institutional economics, particularly that of Thorstein Veblen. His broad research interests span from evolutionary economics and history of economic thought to Marxism and theoretical biology. He first became known for his book Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics (1988), in which modern 'mainstream' economics is criticized, and the call is made to revise economic theory on the new grounds of institutionalism. His reputation has become enhanced owing to the trilogy of more recent books - Economics and Utopia (1999), How Economics Forgot History (2001) and The Evolution of Institutional Economics (2004) all of which built Hodgon's arguments into a more rounded and powerful critique of mainstream economic theory.

Contents

[edit] Institutions according to Hodgson

According to Hodgson, institutions make up our social life. He defines them in a 2006 article by saying that institutions are “the systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interaction”. Examples of institutions may be language, money, law, systems of weights and measures, table manners and organizations (for example firms). Conventions, that may be included in law, can be regarded to be institutions as well (Hodgson, 2006, p.2).

What Hodgson considers important about institutions is the way that they structure our social life and the way they are coming up or going down. An important aspect about institutions is, according to Hodgson, that they are useful to create stable expectations. He argues that: “Generally, institutions enable ordered thought, expectation, and action by imposing form and consistency on human activities.” In other words, the institutions we share with each other as humans are making social life easier, more predictable and therefore more efficient. On the other hand, institutions constrain behaviour as well. The existence of rules or law for example makes our free decision-making less bounded. The other side of the concept of institutions therefore is the limitation of choices and actions (Hodgson, 2006, p.2).

In describing the concept of institutions the term rule is often used. Hodgson says that broadly understood rule means “a socially transmitted and customary normative injunction or immanently normative disposition, that in circumstances X do Y (Hodgson, 2006, p.3).

In this way prohibition rules for example exclude many outcomes from a starting situation. People may not think about rules very consciously or acknowledge or follow them with much thought, rules can work very subtle. According to Hodgson the way people interpret and value rules is important for the development of rules. An example for this argument is that a new law is not a rule as long as the law is not accompanied by a custom that comes from society. The custom can give a normative status to a rule that will help a new law to become a law. In the process of social interaction norms are constantly changed (Hodgson, 2006, pp.3-4)

[edit] Books

  • "Economics in the Shadows of Darwin and Marx" (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2006). ISBN-13: 978 1 84542 497 8. ISBN-10: 1 84542 497 2.
  • "The Evolution of Institutional Economics: Agency, Structure and Darwinism in American Institutionalism" (Routledge, London, 2004). ISBN 0-415-32253-7
  • "A Modern Reader in Evolutionary and Institutional Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham and Northampton, 2002) ISBN 1-84064-474-5
  • "How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science" (Routledge, London, 2001). ISBN 0-415-25717-4
  • "Evolution and Institutions" (Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham and Northampton, 1999) ISBN 1-85898-813-6
  • "Economics and Utopia: Why the Learning Economy is Not the End of History" (Routledge, London, 1999) ISBN 0-415-19685-X
  • "Economics and Evolution: Bringning Life Back Into Economics" (University Of Michigan Press, 1993). ISBN 0-472-10522-1
  • "Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics" (Polity Press, Cambridge, and University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1988). ISBN 0-7456-0277-0
  • "After Marx and Sraffa: Essays in Political Economy" (Macmillan Press, London, 1991). ISBN 033354224X
  • "Labour at the Crossroads" (Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1981). ISBN 0855204621
  • "Socialism and Parliamentary Democracy" (Spokesman, Nottingham, 1977. Also in Italian, Spanish, Turkish and Japanese editions) ISBN 0851242073

[edit] Reference

  • Hodgson, G.M., ‘What are institutions?’, Journal of economic issues 2006 vol. 40 no.1, p.2-4 (on the internet: [1])

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../g/e/o/Geoffrey_Hodgson_af80.html"