Conventions and Structures in Economic Organization: Markets, Networks and Hierarchies (New Horizons in Institutional and Evolutionary Economics series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1840645105 ISBN 13: 9781840645101

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

For individual actors involved in economic activities (i.e. production, exchanges), conventions and structures represent two different types of opportunity or constraint. Conventions refer to values, rules and representations that influence economic behaviour. Structures refer to patterns of resource interdependencies existing among members of any social system.

This book contributes to the current rapprochement between economics and sociology. It examines the fact that individuals use rules and interdependencies to forward their own interests, while living in social environments where everyone does the same. The authors argue that to construct durable organizations and viable markets, they need to be able to handle both. However, thus far, economists and sociologists have not been able to reconcile the relationship between these two types of constraints on economic activity.

Conventions and Structures in Economic Organization seeks to bridge this gap and will appeal to students and scholars in both economics and sociology, offering them new ideas about how they can co-operate in unsuspected ways and combine their interdisciplinary efforts.

About this title

About the Author

Edited by Olivier Favereau, Professor of Economics, University of Paris, Nanterre and Emmanuel Lazega, Department of Sociology, Sciences Po, CSO-CNRS, IUF, France

Edition details

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1840645105
• ISBN 13: 9781840645101
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Favereau Olivier, Lazega Emmanuel