Mario Cimoli, Giovanni Dosi, Richard Nelson, and Joseph E. Stiglitz
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199235261
- eISBN:
- 9780191715617
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199235261.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
This chapter notes that all historical experiences of sustained economic growth — starting at least from the English Industrial Revolution — find their enabling conditions in a rich set of ...
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This chapter notes that all historical experiences of sustained economic growth — starting at least from the English Industrial Revolution — find their enabling conditions in a rich set of complementary institutions, shared behavioral norms, and public policies. Indeed, the paramount importance of institutions and social norms appears to be a rather universal property of every form of collective organization we are aware of. Moreover, much more narrowly, discretionary public policies have been major ingredients of national development strategies, especially in catching-up countries, throughout the history of modern capitalism. Conversely, from a symmetric perspective, there are extremely sound theoretical reasons supporting the notion that institutions and policies always matter in all processes of technological learning and economic coordination and change. This chapter focuses on the latter issue and outlines some theoretical foundations and for industrial policies in a broad sense, and for measures of “institutional engineering” shaping the very nature of the economic actors, the market mechanisms and rules under which they operate, and the boundaries between what is governed by market interactions, and what is not.Less
This chapter notes that all historical experiences of sustained economic growth — starting at least from the English Industrial Revolution — find their enabling conditions in a rich set of complementary institutions, shared behavioral norms, and public policies. Indeed, the paramount importance of institutions and social norms appears to be a rather universal property of every form of collective organization we are aware of. Moreover, much more narrowly, discretionary public policies have been major ingredients of national development strategies, especially in catching-up countries, throughout the history of modern capitalism. Conversely, from a symmetric perspective, there are extremely sound theoretical reasons supporting the notion that institutions and policies always matter in all processes of technological learning and economic coordination and change. This chapter focuses on the latter issue and outlines some theoretical foundations and for industrial policies in a broad sense, and for measures of “institutional engineering” shaping the very nature of the economic actors, the market mechanisms and rules under which they operate, and the boundaries between what is governed by market interactions, and what is not.
Alex Preda
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226679310
- eISBN:
- 9780226679334
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226679334.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter investigates how the notion of panic crystallizes in representations of the market and how it affects the hierarchy of speculators. The charismatic features of the latter cannot ...
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This chapter investigates how the notion of panic crystallizes in representations of the market and how it affects the hierarchy of speculators. The charismatic features of the latter cannot withstand crowd movements like panic. One of the major contradictions at the boundaries of markets appears to be the same as that between an individualism grounded in a vitalistic notion of force and the crowd's stampede. The chapter explores how the notion of (financial) panic, emerging almost simultaneously in economic and psychiatric writings, deals with this contradiction. It also examines how representations of panic—from the media, for instance—are used by market participants to make sense of their own actions. Based on a reconstruction of actual practices, the chapter argues that such representations should be understood as material observational tools, which help dispersed actors to see their situations as identical or similar.Less
This chapter investigates how the notion of panic crystallizes in representations of the market and how it affects the hierarchy of speculators. The charismatic features of the latter cannot withstand crowd movements like panic. One of the major contradictions at the boundaries of markets appears to be the same as that between an individualism grounded in a vitalistic notion of force and the crowd's stampede. The chapter explores how the notion of (financial) panic, emerging almost simultaneously in economic and psychiatric writings, deals with this contradiction. It also examines how representations of panic—from the media, for instance—are used by market participants to make sense of their own actions. Based on a reconstruction of actual practices, the chapter argues that such representations should be understood as material observational tools, which help dispersed actors to see their situations as identical or similar.
