Научно-издательский центрJacques Sapir
DOI: 10.38006/907345-19-5.2020.40.94
The word “institutions” is now frequently used by economists to the point one may wonder if institutionalism has not became the new mainstream. Institutionalism arose from the need to give their place to notions of time and money, to understand meaning and consequences of radical uncertainty, and also to understand what a market or a firm are. Institutionalism implies that economic theory is aimed at understanding the world as it is (and not as we would like it to be), and makes reference to “truth realism”, which implies that one judges a theory in its confrontation with the world and not only on its criteria of internal coherence or conformity to the initial axioms. This paper would then focuses first on what institutions are, discusses the opposition between formal and informal institutions, and shows a strong link between institutions and the subjective point of view in economics. It would then moves on reasons why institutions are necessary to understand the economic system, and why they are making particularly effective devices for processing information. It then would try to explain how do they work, why are they central to political economy, and why they are connected to the issue of social conflict.