Evolutionary foundations of Coasean economics : transforming new institutional economics into evolutionary economics

In recent years, interest in the role of institutions in economic society has increased and economists have been forced to incorporate them into economic analysis. The institutional perspective has not only brought new challenges for economics, but also led to a re-evaluation, redefinition, and transformation of the discipline itself. It would not be an overstatement to say that the method by which we deal with and formalize institutions determines the boundaries among the various schools of economic thought, and between economics and related disciplines. New institutional economics (hereafter NIE), is one of the fields that have fluctuated between such boundaries. The work of the official founder of NIE, Ronald Coase, is an appropriate starting point for considering the characteristics of the field and its prospective development. This historical and methodological study explores the development of Coase's economic thought from the 1930s through the 1970s and into recent times. I show that Coase's theoretical orientation transformed around the 1970s from a neoclassical to an anti-neoclassical stance; a fact that points to the evolutionary foundations of Coasean economics. Chapter 1 begins with the general relationship among neoclassical, new institutional, and Coasean economics. Invoking Imre Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programmes, NIE is distinguished from neoclassical economics: though they share a theoretical core, the former is positioned as an expansion of neoclassical economics. Then Coase's two facets in relation to NIE are provisionally confirmed: the one as a founder of NIE and the other as a critic of mainstream economics. That is to say, whereas Coase's arguments in " The nature of