Is there a future for institutional economics? Decidedly there is. Because the problems which are characteristically arising in the modern development of our socio-economic systems – the development which we may designate as that of the mixed economy as a mode of production – require, if to be handled properly, an institutional type of approach.

It may be recalled that I enumerated, in an earlier chapter, the following four common characteristics of institutional economists;

1. A. the emphasis on the open-system character of production and consumption, thus a broader view of the scope of economics;

2. B. an interest in the evolutionary course along which the industrial economies are moving, with emphasis on the dynamic process of technological change and circular cumulative causation;

3. c. awareness of a growing need for guidance that can be supplied only through some form of overall social management or planning;

4. D. recognition that economics must become a normative science, positively formulating social goals and objectives.

We can see that all these characteristics are quite germane to the analysis of a mixed economy. As Samuelson and Nordhaus wrote: ‘Ours is a “mixed economy”, in which both private and public institutions exercise economic control: the private system through the invisible direction of the market mechanism, the public institutions through regulatory commands and fiscal incentives’. Clearly, ‘regulatory commands’ imply some kind of ‘social management or planning’, which in turn must be formulated only on the basis of definable ‘social goals and objectives’.