Perspectives of Economics of Convention on Markets, Organizations, and Law: An Introduction

Abstract

»Perspektiven der Economie des conventions auf Märkte, Organisationen und Recht. Eine Einleitung«. The article introduces the French approach of economics of convention (in short EC), presents some of its core concepts – as quality conventions – and introduces some of its perspectives on markets, organizations, and law. EC is characterized as a pragmatist institutionalism, which has conceptions of human agency, rationality, market, organization, state, and institution that make EC distinct from other established institutional approaches. EC continues structuralist perspectives and shows a growing interest in the social theory of Michel Foucault, who worked on power, dispositive, and discourse. This article sketches also some newer developments of EC’s research on markets, organizations, and law and offers an introductory frame for the other contributions of the HSR Special Issue. One focus of this special issue is to present contributions of members of the second and third generation of EC (as mostly formed at the University of Paris X – Nanterre) but also of an international group of scholars in the field, who apply EC to the analysis of markets, organizations and law.