New Institutional Economics

Le Strat, P.Y. (2004) Quality certification in flesh products a three-level relationship. Seminar to the European School on New Institutional Economics (www.esnie.org/en/2004/seminaires.php). 

Zenger, T. R., S. G. Lazzarini, L. Poppo, 2002. Informal and formal organization in new institutional economics. In P. Ingram and B. S. Silverman. New Institutionalism in Strategic Management. Amsterdam, JAl-Elsevier Science. 19 277-305. 

Sykuta, M.E. andM L. Cook, 2001. A new institutional economics approach to contracts and cooperatives. Amer. 

Szabo, G.G., 2002. New institutional economics and agricultural co-operatives a Himgarian case study. In Local society global economy the role of co-operatives. S. Karafolas, R. Spear and Y. Stryjan (eds.). Editions Hellin ICA International Research Conference, Naoussa, Greece, pp. 357-378. 

Keywords power, scale-free networks, new institutional economics... 

In the next section, I introduce the concept of power, confronting some different definitions of power from different realms of social science. Section 3 surveys economic literature on power, stemming from the view of the standard model to the newest theories developed by the new institutional economics and to power definition and concepts suggested by different strands of social network analysis. Section 4 uses different concepts of power to address some organizational problems in the food system. 

In the next sections, in surveying different approaches to the study of power in economics, I first present approaches stemmed from the standard model that preserve hypothesis of methodological individualism and rational choice. Subsequently I introduce three structural approaches stemmed from hterature on sociological economics based on the hypothesis of methodological collectivism. Finally, I integrate these different approaches in a general framework drawn on the perspective of the New Institutional Economics. 

A general framework from the perspective of the New Institutional Economics... 

In a sense. New Institutional Economics can be considered as an extension of the standard model that takes explicitly into account the power issue. The famous Robertson s definition of firms as islands of conscious power in this ocean of unconscious cooperation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk , was used by Coase (1937) to launch the question of how is that in capitahst economies firms (and thus power) do substitute the market as a means to allocate resources (this issue has been recently addressed by Rajan and Zingales, 1998). 

New Institutional Economics points out that certain characteristics of procurement relationship (for instance repeated purchases, with complex contract specification) can lead the parties to switch from short-term contracts (spot markets) to long term contracts that entail power in terms of Coleman s voluntary authority disjoint relationships. 

Palermo, G., 2000. Economic power and firm in new Institutional Economics Two conflicting problems. Journal of Economic Issues, 34, 573-601. 

Raynaud, E., L.Sauvee and E. Valceschini, 2004. Fit between branding strategies and governance of transactions. 8 Annual Conference of the New Institutional Economics Institutions and economics and political behavior Tucson, Arizona, September 30 - October 4. 

Khan, M. (1995) State Failure in Weak States A Critique of New Institutionalist Explanations, in J. Harris, J. Hunter and C. Lewis (eds.). The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development, Sage, London. 

This attention to stmcture and performance, and to Athenian economic, legal, and social institutions, is consistent with the transformative New Institutional Economics, which emphasizes institutions in the sense of background constraints or mies of the games (Frier and Kehoe 2007 113-14) and suggests that the task of economic history (is] to explain the stmcture and performance of economies through time (North 1981 5). See Morris, Sailer, and Scheidel 2007. 

One purpose of collectivization was to destroy these economic and social units, which were hostile to state control, and to force the peasantry into an institutional straitjacket of the state s devising. The new institutional order of collective farms would now be compatible with the state s purposes of appropriation and directed development. Given the quasi-civil war conditions of the countryside, the solution was as much a product of military occupation and pacification as of "socialist transformation. ... 

The combination of declining industrial demand for trained chemists as well as for academic chemical research, plus the government budget cuts resulting from the economic crisis (in Saxony this was described as a "financial catastrophe"), clearly had a negative effect on the development of academic research. Certainly efforts to expand and modernize research facilities were weakened, as the old pattern of building new institutes for newly hired chemists became virtually impossible during the crisis years. ... 

Menard, C. and E. Valceschini, 2005. New institutions for governing the agri-food industry. European Review Of Agricultural Economics, 32(3) 421-440. 

J. W. Savage and D. Bailey, Economic Potential of the New Sodium Minerals Found in the Green Piver Formation, presented at 61st Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Los Angeles, Calif., Dec. 1—5, 1968. 

The main conclusion of an expert workshop on endocrine modulators and wildlife in 1997 was that some existing test methods, as defined in guidelines published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), could be adapted to incorporate specific endocrine disrupting endpoints, but that there might also be the need to develop new tests, e.g. for fish. On behalf of the UK Government, the MRC Institute for Environment and Health (lEH)... 

Eric Scerri studied chemistry at the Universities of London, Cambridge and Southampton, and obtained a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from King s College, London on the question of "The Reduction of Chemistry to Quantum Mechanics," He has been a research felloiu in the history and philosophy of science at the London School of Economics and at the California Institute of Technology. He is currently an assistant professor of chemistry at Bradley University, where he also teaches histoiy and philosophy of chemistry, which are also his main research interests. He is editor of the new journal Foundations of Chemistry. Address Department of Chemistry, Bradley University, Peoria, IL 61625. Internet scerri bradley.edu. 

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