On Austrian Institutions -what’s in It for a Market Sociology?-

Many are compelled to provide accounts of the market in order to enrich research and policy agendas. This holds for anything from the discourse on the new economy to the coughing process of European marketization as experienced in transition economies and in controversies surrounding de-regulation procedures. But. The market is a tricky thing. Those who are expected to occupy a primary position in the discourse, economists, hardly do so (confer Zelizer 1996 (1988), Swedberg 2003). From within that discipline itself we learn that the market constitutes an ‘empirical difficulty’ (Tirole 1995 (1988), pp 12-13) and in consequence it becomes an ‘empty generic conceptualization’ (Demsetz 1982, p 6). Part of this flaw is well illuminated by Solow (1990, p 281) who, commenting on game theory that often is used to represent market interaction, observes that ‘...the game has no sociological structure at all.’ The case thus made for a progressive market sociology is nicely promoted by Mises (1963 (1949), p 315).