How behavior and institutions are affected by social relations is one of the classic questions of social theory. This paper concerns the extent to which economic action is embedded in structures of social relations, in modern industrial society. Although the usual neoclasical accounts provide an "undersocialized" or atomized-actor explanation of such action, reformist economists who attempt to bring social structure back in do so in the "oversocialized" way criticized by Dennis Wrong. Under-and oversocialized accounts are paradoxically similar in their neglect of ongoing structures of social relations, and a sophisticated account of economic action must consider its embeddedness in such structures. The argument in illustrated by a critique of Oliver Williamson's "markets and hierarchies" research program.

Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness

Scholars of the theory of the firm have begun to emphasize the sources and conditions of what has been described as “the organizational advantage,” rather than focus on the causes and consequences of market failure. Typically, researchers see such organizational advantage as accruing from the particular capabilities organizations have for creating and sharing knowledge. In this article we seek to contribute to this body of work by developing the following arguments: (1) social capital facilitates the creation of new intellectual capital; (2) organizations, as institutional settings, are conducive to the development of high levels of social capital; and (3) it is because of their more dense social capital that firms, within certain limits, have an advantage over markets in creating and sharing intellectual capital. We present a model that incorporates this overall argument in the form of a series of hypothesized relationships between different dimensions of social capital and the main mechanisms and proces...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259373.pdf

Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and the Organizational Advantage

In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advantage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interorganizational competitive advantage: (1) relation-specific assets, (2) knowledge-sharing routines, (3) complementary resources/capabilities, and (4) effective governance. We examine each of these potential sources of rent in detail, identifying key subprocesses, and also discuss the isolating mechanisms that serve to preserve relational rents. Finally, we discuss how the relational view may offer normative prescriptions for firm-level strategies that contradict the prescriptions offered by those with a resource-based view or industry structure view.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259056.pdf

The Relational View: Cooperative Strategy and Sources of Interorganizational Competitive Advantage

Output per worker varies enormously across countries. Why? On an accounting basis, our analysis shows that differences in physical capital and educational attainment can only partially explain the variation in output per worker--we find a large amount of variation in the level of the Solow residual across countries. At a deeper level, we document that the differences in capital accumulation, productivity, and therefore output per worker are driven by differences in institutions and government policies, which we call social infrastructure. We treat social infrastructure as endogenous, determined historically by location and other factors captured in part by language.

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Why Do Some Countries Produce so Much More Output Per Worker than Others

This paper analyzes a newly assembled data set consisting of subjective indices of corruption, the amount of red tape, the efficiency of the judicial system, and various categories of political stability for a cross section of countries. Corruption is found to lower investment, thereby lowering economic growth. The results are robust to controlling for endogeneity by using an index of ethnolinguistic fractionalization as an instrument.

/pdf/corruption-and-growth-2z9d0x0u16.pdf

Corruption and Growth

In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. Douglass North inspired a revolution in economic history a generation ago by demonstrating that economic performance is determined largely by the kind and quality of institutions that support markets. As he showed in two now classic books that inspired the New Institutional Economics (today a subfield of economics), property rights and transaction costs are fundamental determinants. Here, North explains how different societies arrive at the institutional infrastructure that greatly determines their economic trajectories. North argues that economic change depends largely on "adaptive efficiency," a society’s effectiveness in creating institutions that are productive, stable, fair, and broadly accepted--and, importantly, flexible enough to be changed or replaced in response to political and economic feedback. While adhering to his earlier definition of institutions as the formal and informal rules that constrain human economic behavior, he extends his analysis to explore the deeper determinants of how these rules evolve and how economies change. Drawing on recent work by psychologists, he identifies intentionality as the crucial variable and proceeds to demonstrate how intentionality emerges as the product of social learning and how it then shapes the economy's institutional foundations and thus its capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Understanding the Process of Economic Change accounts not only for past institutional change but also for the diverse performance of present-day economies. This major work is therefore also an essential guide to improving the performance of developing countries.

Introduction to Understanding the Process of Economic Change

The growth of the American economy to 1860

A theory of institutional change is essential for further progress in the social sciences in general and economics in particular. Essential because neo-classical theory (and other theories in the social scientist's toolbag) at present cannot satisfactorily account for the very diverse performance of societies and economies both at a moment of time and over time. The explanations derived from neo-classical theory are not satisfactory because, while the models may account for most of the differences in performance between economies on the basis of differential investment in education, savings rates, etc., they do not account for why economies would fail to undertake the appropriate activities if they had a high payoff. Institutions determine the payoffs. While the fundamental neo-classical assumption of scarcity and hence competition has been robust (and is basic to this analysis), the assumption of a frictionless exchange process has led economic theory astray. Institutions are the structure that humans impose on human interaction and therefore define the incentives that (together with the other constraints (budget, technology, etc.) determine the choices that individuals make that shape the performance of societies and economies over time. In the following pages, I sketch out a framework for analyzing institutions. This framework builds on the economic theory of choice subject to constraints. However it incorporates new assumptions about both the constraints that individuals face and the process by which they make choices within those constraints. Too many gaps still remain in our understanding of this new approach to call it a theory. What I do provide are a set of definitions, principles, and a structure which provide (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Institutional Changes: A Framework of Analysis

I take my text from Max Hartwell: "...but no historian has detailed the steps by which for example, the market economy was achieved in terms of government action or changing law; no historian has linked mercantilist with laissez-faire law to trace the chronology of legal and economic change. In this neglect, surely a major element for understanding of the industrial revolution has been overlooked." And Max might have added that in consequence of our failure to analyze how a market economy was achieved in history we have not been able to provide guidance for policy makers in the present world who are attempting to restructure failed centrally planned economies. A first step in meeting Max's challenge is to delineate the institutional characteristics of market economies in order that we may then explore their historical evolution.

Douglass C. North

Papers

Introduction to Understanding the Process of Economic Change

The growth of the American economy to 1860

Institutional Changes: A Framework of Analysis

The Evolution Of Efficient Markets In History

The Estimation of Shipping Earnings in Historical Studies of the Balance of Payments