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(Neue) Institutionenökonomik und ihre Anwendung auf die Alte Welt

Abstract

The claim that “institutions matter” is at the core of the New Institutional Economics. This field of economic theory assumes that both the process and the result of any (economic) transaction depend on two ingredients: On the one hand, an individual as a decision-making unit and, on the other hand, a set of exogenous boundaries as well as humanly devised norms and rules that constrain the individual decision making. These latter constraints have been named “institu­tions” by Douglas North who stressed the fact that these norms that regulate human interaction are themselves the result of a social process. He showed that it is worthwhile to understand the development of institutions as a result of individual decision making that is constrained by insti­tutions – and started a new subfield of economic research.
This paper explains the concept of institutions as a frame for individual decision making. By use of market exchange and land property rights as examples of interactive economic decisions it delineates the effect that different sets of institutions can have on the result of interactions. That way it develops the methodological thread that links the results from the different research fields in the study of the Ancient World presented in this collected volume.