The Founding of Institutional Economics: The Leisure Class and Sovereignty(Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)

Institutional economics has been a major part of economic thought for the whole of the twentieth century, and today remains crucial to an understanding of the development of heterodox economics. The two principal publications that founded the school were Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class and Commons's A Sociological View of Sovereignty, both published in 1899. As a tribute to these two seminal works, Warren Samuels has assembled an exceptionally prestigious international group of scholars to produce this landmark volume celebrating the centenary. The chapters assess the work of Veblen and Commons and their influence on the school of institutional economics from a variety of theoretical perspectives. The contributions on Veblen appraise his anthropological analysis of consumption habits of American households from sociological, linguistic and feminist points of view. Conversely, the essays on Commons's work focus on the concepts of property, power and the relationship between legality and economics.

Table of Contents:
Introduction PART I Veblen and Commons 1 Veblen, Commons, and the Industrial Commission 2 Veblen and Commons and the concept of community PART II Commons, A Sociological View of Sovereignty 3 An evolutionary theory of the development of property and the state 4 Sovereignty and withholding in John Commons’s political economy 5 The identity and significance of Commons’s A Sociological View of Sovereignty 6 Commons, sovereignty, and the legal basis of the economic system 7 John R.Commons’s “Political Economy and Law”: Harbinger of A Sociological View of Sovereignty and Legal Foundations of Capitalism PART III Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class 8 Veblen and the vanishing of the “leisure class” 9 The Theory of the Leisure Class and the theory of demand 10 Veblen’s contribution to the instrumental theory of normative value 11 Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class and the genesis of evolutionary economics 12 Veblen’s feminism in historical perspective 13 Veblen and the anthropological perspective 14 The rhetoricality of Thorstein Veblen’s economic theorizing: A critical reading of The Theory of the Leisure Class 15 Georg Simmel and Thorstein Veblen on fashion fin de siècle 16 A neoinstitutional theory of social change in Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class

About the Author :
Warren J. Samuels is Professor of Economics at Michigan State University, specializing in the history of economic thought, methodology, and law and economics.