Circular Cumulative Causation (CCC) à la Myrdal and Kapp — Political Institutionalism for Minimizing Social Costs

This paper reconstructs the CCC from the writings of Myrdal and Kapp to explore the unique characteristics of this key concept of institutional economics. Moreover, the paper demonstrates the CCC’s application to minimize social costs and its implications for Political Institutionalism. Incorporating new unpublished material from the Kapp Archive, namely the Myrdal-Kapp correspondence and Kapp’s CCC lecture notes, the paper provides insights about the cooperation between the two economists and about Kapp’s conceptual understanding of CCC. In addition, important differences to Veblen’s CC and Kaldor’s CC are pointed out to underline the CCC’s uniqueness and its significance for institutional economics.