Why does collaboration among competitors persist as industries mature? Standard models predict it will fade with formal governance and rivalry, yet in some sectors, it becomes a stable norm. Using a Veblenian Original Institutional Economics (OIE) lens, this paper develops a four-stage heuristic linking evolving uncertainty (radical, relational, coordination, durability) to distinct coordination logics. A mixed-methods study of the U.S. artisanal cheese industry (1975–2018) shows that collaboration became institutionalised through habituated practice, identity alignment, and moral commitment, later layered with formal supports. The framework clarifies how OIE best explains norm emergence and reproduction, while New Institutional Economics (NIE) helps account for codifying and scaling already-institutionalised norms. Quantitatively, peer networks shifted toward higher clustering and greater geographic localisation; qualitatively, mentorship and open exchange sedimented into professional expectations. Collaboration endures because it is morally meaningful, identity-affirming, and institutionally reproduced. Efficiency benefits may follow, but they do not explain its origin or persistence.

Our study investigates the impact of successful violent and non-violent revolutions on post-revolutionary institutions concerning women. Leveraging the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes data on successful revolutions and the Varieties of Democracy dataset for gender-specific metrics, we employ fixed-effect difference-in-differences and Callaway Sant’Anna. Our results show positive effects from both treatments. Non-violent revolutions with regime change intentions have a more consistent positive impact on women’s empowerment indices than violent revolutions, while revolutions without regime change intentions show mixed or limited effects across both violent and non-violent cases.

This study sheds light on the diffusion of knowledge production as an institutional norm among central, development, and investment banks. It builds on an original database of 24,435 peer-reviewed scientific items published by a pool of 237 central banks, development banks, and investment banks from 1966 to 2023. The focus is on their interactive dynamics, analysed through a two-fold approach: Granger-Causality analysis for linear relationships and a multivariate Markov chain approach for non-linear interactions. Central banks emerge as leaders in scientific production, influencing development and investment banks. Results lead to further questions about inter-institutional agenda-setting, such as how central banks shape research priorities, the extent to which their intellectual leadership impacts others’ priorities, and the mechanisms through which institutional norms are diffused and reinforced within the global financial and policymaking landscape.

This article revisits the methodological foundations of Elinor Ostrom’s institutionalism by examining the role of ‘complexity’ in her work and the conceptual influence of Herbert A. Simon. While Simon was not Ostrom’s most frequently cited reference, his thought – particularly as articulated in The Sciences of the Artificial – exerted a formative and enduring influence on her analytical framework. Drawing on Ostrom’s later writings, in which she offers a retrospective account of her intellectual trajectory, we show how Simon’s systems-engineering perspective provides a coherent framework for understanding her approach to institutional complexity, despite notable differences in their respective research objects and theoretical priorities. For Ostrom, institutions evolve incrementally as ‘boundedly’ rational individuals attempt to resolve collective problems through successive modifications of rule structures within complex social systems. In contrast to top-down optimisation models, her work emphasises adaptive responses and practical problem-solving. Interpreting Ostrom’s methodology through a Simonian lens not only deepens our understanding of her contribution to institutional economics but also illustrates the value of interdisciplinary approaches informed by complexity theory for the field.

We investigate the impact of corruption on female leadership in Brazil using cross-sectional municipal-level data. Our findings suggest that corruption significantly reduces the proportion of working women in leadership roles. Additionally, corruption decreases female representation in leadership relative to men, though this effect is less robust. When examining sectors most vulnerable to corruption, the results remain largely consistent, but we also note that women tend to avoid these sectors entirely. Our findings suggest that corruption acts as a significant barrier to female leadership.

Post-Northian institutional economics has been predicated on the socially extended and enactivist concept of cognitive institution. It has recently been suggested that this framework should include North’s definition of institutions as ‘rules of the game’. In this paper, we agree with this normative turn but take issue with the mental-model framework in which it is proposed. Retaining both shared mental models and rules of the game remains too ‘Northian’, even if complemented with enactivist dynamic principles of mental-model change. We propose an alternative enactivist concept of norm that entirely avoids mental models. We base it on an alternative social ontology that considers norms as located in the relation between agents and institutions. The implications of this relational ontology for the norms (or principles) of rationality are also discussed. We argue that a truly relational framework requires abandoning the adaptationist norm of rationality in favour of coordinative rationality principles.

This study examines how individualism influences patriarchal gender norms across 93 countries, using data from the Integrated Values Surveys. We hypothesize that individualism, emphasizing personal autonomy and egalitarian values, reduces patriarchal attitudes directly and indirectly through formal institutions. Our findings reveal a robust negative association between individualism and patriarchal attitudes, with a one-standard deviation increase in individualism linked to a 0.78 standard deviation decrease in patriarchal attitudes. This association holds across various controls and instrumental variable techniques addressing endogeneity. Mediation analysis shows that institutions, particularly liberal democracy and legal gender parity, mediate 5% to 37% of this association. These results underscore individualism’s role in promoting egalitarian gender norms and suggest that culturally aligned institutional reforms, such as strengthening women’s economic rights or democratic participation, can amplify these effects.

This paper examines how the distance between a country’s official language and the languages spoken by its citizens influences accountability. Two arguments support this relationship: first, the role of language as a tool for communication between elites and citizens; and second, its role in shaping cultural patterns that underpin social interactions. Using a dataset of 147 countries, we reveal a consistent negative correlation between linguistic distance and levels of accountability across all measures. Higher educational attainment can mitigate the negative impact of a foreign official language on accountability.

The Iranian economy under the Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced 9 exchange rate shocks since the 1979 revolution. In particular, the shocks intensified with the sanctions on Iran in 2011. Many econometric tests have identified the effects of shocks, but the institutional sources of these shocks are underexplored. The contribution of this paper demonstrates that the Iranian macroeconomic dynamics are shaped by institutional factors. Anfal, the exclusive property of res nullius by the supreme jurisconsult, and the Shiite political capitalism deriving from it, foster parallel institutions, specifically parallel public treasuries, and speculative (hoarding) behaviour among agents, which in turn cause recurring exchange rate crises. Different economic policies of fundamentalists and reformists in the Islamic Republic of Iran are critically assessed, and the importance of constitutional elimination of the religious public finance (Anfal) and the creation of a unified secular public finance system is discussed.

Corporate law is a public policy balance. The state creates the corporation and provides its legal features. ‘Micro’ aspects of the corporation, like separate legal personality, limited liability, and perpetual succession, were each provided by the state for public benefits rather than for their evident private benefits. Widespread utilisation of the corporation provides ‘macro’ public benefits. Corporations can also harm third parties, and the state should balance benefits and harms. Yet modern corporate law theory downplays the state’s role. Those who focus on the state also tend to miss the state’s foundational role in setting the contours of the corporation and corporate law and encouraging certain behaviour. Identifying that corporate law is, descriptively, best seen as a public policy outcome shows the state is not a benign white knight which can only restrain corporations but instead should be seen as culpable in any perceived social harms caused by corporations.

This paper develops an enactivist theory of expectation formation by introducing the concept of temporal affordances: institutionally structured possibilities for engaging with the future. Standard economic accounts treat expectations as internal beliefs and institutions as external constraints, while subjectivist approaches locate them in imagination and treat institutions as points of orientation. In contrast, this paper argues that institutions co-constitute expectations themselves. Drawing on affordance theory and the anthropology of time, it identifies four dimensions through which institutions shape temporal orientation: horizon, openness, grounding, and valence. Rather than understanding expectations as internal representations, it argues that engagement with institutional temporal affordances gives rise to distinct modes of expectation – institutionally enacted ways of relating to the future. By showing how different affordance configurations generate heterogeneity in expectations, the paper offers a conceptual tool for comparative institutional analysis and shows how institutions structure varieties of temporal orientation that underpin economic and social life.

Number systems are shared social technologies. They are heterogeneous, differing along dimensions of modality, base, and marking. These characteristics impart differential advantages depending on purpose and context, which explains why most cultures employ multiple number systems simultaneously. Number systems are embedded in patterns of complementarity involving both human and physical capital. Viewing number systems this way allows us to apply economic insights about production, cost, and technology to things often regarded as purely abstract cognitive conventions. Combining these insights with the literature on 4E cognition shows how concrete economic factors can shape key aspects of how humans think.

The last decades have seen important progress in the economic analysis of institutions, with increasing concern about the need to ‘unbundle’ this concept and the diversity of situations it covers. It is so because of the complexity of the systems the concept intends to capture and the ambiguity of definitions often perceived as catch-all ideas without a clear connection to a research strategy. This essay contributes to the literature emphasising that overcoming these difficulties requires a theoretical framework identifying and characterising distinct institutional layers. The content of this framework is substantiated through the analysis of the nature and role of the long-ignored intermediate layer of ‘meso-institutions’. Meso-institutions designate devices and transmission mechanisms linking general rules, norms and beliefs established at the macro-institutional level with their perception, adaptation, and implementation (or challenge) by the actors populating the micro-level. Operationalising this framework relies on a research strategy that proceeds from a ‘substantive theory’ of institutions to the collection and processing of ‘empirical evidences’ through the development of ‘auxiliary theories’ designed to capture specific institutional objects. References to several empirical studies support the relevance of this approach.

What can economists and lawyers contribute to the stock of useful knowledge for designing institutions? How do their contributions differ? I argue that law and economics generate two complementary but distinct types of knowledge. At its core, legal knowledge is participatory and internal to law’s practice, while economic knowledge is observational and external. Drawing on Michael Polanyi’s concept of ‘intellectual orders’, I propose that economics as a social science and law as a primarily practical profession each rely on complex institutions to generate their respective types of knowledge. The comparative analysis clarifies the potential and limits of using economics for institutional design, the role of law as a knowledge-generating profession, and principles for intellectual collaboration.

Social scientists are paying attention to the role that knowledge plays in economic phenomena. This focus on knowledge has led to exploring two challenges: first, its governance to reap positive externalities and solve social dilemmas, and second, how we can craft institutions to match the intangible nature of ideas with adequate property rules. This article contributes by elaborating on the different knowledge property regimes and the elements contributing to their classification. This paper first taxonomises knowledge governance regimes based on Ostrom’s work on institutional analysis. Second, it examines why governance structures for managing knowledge production vary across industries, according to (1) the characteristics of knowledge, (2) the attributes of the organisations, and (3) the different rules-in-use to enforce property rights. This is the first study at the intersection of institutional analysis and political economy that highlights the knowledge features, incentive structures, and mechanisms undergirding knowledge governance in different property regimes.

The article examines the drivers of migrant atypical employment in the manufacturing sector of Emilia-Romagna, an Italian region that is well known for its high-quality manufacturing productions and industrial relations. By drawing on administrative data based on mandatory communications, we document that, even in such an institutional context, migrants have a disproportionately higher likelihood of being hired through either fixed-term or agency contracts than native workers. We interpret this evidence through a set of different theories, including human capital theory, dual labour market processes, the use of precarious contracts as screening devices, and institutional segmentation theories. The empirical analysis reveals that while migrant employment through fixed-term contracts is consistent with dual processes and screening practices, the hiring of migrants with agency contracts is driven by processes of institutional segmentation, through which employers shift the costs of flexibility to the most vulnerable and less organized segments within the labour force, such as migrants. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.

Preserving or improving biodiversity outcomes requires a coordinated approach across policy levels and land managers. Agri-environmental collectives in the Netherlands adapt environmental policies to local conditions and coordinate the conservation efforts of their members. This paper describes the functions performed by the Dutch collectives through a meso-institutional lens and assesses whether the effectiveness of agri-environmental schemes has improved since the introduction of the collective approach. To this end, we use a case study of one of the Dutch collectives, and a mixed-methods approach including interviews and quantitative assessments of changes in the spatial coordination of the agri-environmental scheme for meadow bird conservation since the introduction of the collective scheme. The analysis shows an increase in contracted farmland area and spatial coordination of the contracted measures on these farmlands. The results highlight the potential value of the collective approach for the implementation of environmental policies for biodiversity.

This article extends recent insights from new institutional economics to explore the relevance of the concept of meso-institutions. It does so through the exploration of the case of the Brazilian Forest Code, pointing out how and why meso-institutions play a key role in making public policies effective. More specifically, our study shows how crucial is the complete fulfilling of the functions characterising meso-institutions – namely translation, monitoring, and enforcement, to implement regulations and determine their effectiveness. Lessons are drawn regarding the complexities inherent in the creation, implementation, and operationalisation of rules across a multilayered institutional environment.

The American K12 education system has long been seen as centralized and rigid. The 1990s saw the emergence of several changes, which arguably pushed it in a potentially more polycentric, localized direction. Many school choice policies have developed since then, and a large amount of research has been conducted on these trends in American education since 1991. Just prior to these changes, in 1991, Davis and Ostrom published ‘A Public Economy Approach to Education: Choice and Co-Production’. That work sought to examine the extent of co-production in American schools to that time, and the extent to which the system was polycentric. This paper seeks to use Davis & Ostrom’s framing and to update their work in the current context. U.S. education policy has generally become more decentralized during this time, but not consistently. This paper also finds that U.S. education policy and practice has in fact developed along several of the lines Davis & Ostrom predicted.