The main objective is to discuss the historical-evolutionary character of the latest work of Douglass North. His views have been lately criticized, especially as far as their historical insight is concerned, as well as the nature of the concepts and the ideas he used. Three interconnected arguments dealing with North's neoclassical roots, his individualistic point of departure and his inclination to universalistic explanations sustain this allegation, and they will be presented in the first part. In the second part, a response to these arguments is suggested. Finally, the evolutionary character of his later work is discussed and established in the last part. It is held that by introducing ‘culture’ into the heart of the analysis of institutional change, North is oriented toward context dependent and consequently historically specific explanations.

Moral behavior and legal institutions coevolve. While evolutionary game theory has often analyzed the evolution of moral behavior within given institutional rules, it has not examined the coevolution of moral preferences and different institutional aspects of the decision environment. By an ‘indirect’ evolutionary approach, we analyze the coevolution of moral preferences (in the sense of trustworthiness) and legal institutions like court rulings and legal insurance. We find that preference detection capabilities crowd in morality and can thus render useless the role of courts and legal insurance as public institutions. Legal institutions become crucial for the emergence of morality, however, when information about preference types is not available. This holds true even when courts do not have superior detection capabilities than other agents.

The new institutional economics has emphasized the importance of ideology in determining the content and direction of institutional change. Ideology can also determine when interest groups succeed in achieving legislative favor. The case of the regulation of in-kind wages in Britain shows that factors highlighted in mainstream political economy (such as interest group strength and organization, self-interest of legislators, and coalitional partners) were important. However, the interaction between relative price changes and social ideology was also significant in explaining the shape and timing of legislative changes. Changes in relative prices gave labor groups the incentive to seek legal protection from non-monetary wages, but they obtained protection only if they met certain criteria established by the prevailing ideology. Changes to that ideology resulted in further legislative changes granting cash wages to most industrial workers.

There is considerable interest in the proper management of public lands in the United States, but questions arise over what institutional arrangements may ensure proper land stewardship. Recently, the trust doctrine has been heralded as a way to motivate prudent decision making by land managers. School trust lands, which are managed to generate revenues for public schools, represent a long-standing example of the trust doctrine at work. We examine Mississippi school trust leases and show that the trustees, who are elected officials, maintain multiple conflicting objectives, which ultimately undermine the trust relationship. However, we find that a recent institutional change that made the Boards of Education (the fund recipients) the trustees, caused revenues to increase dramatically.

Critical realists have gained substantial support within post-Keynesian and Marxian research communities, and it is likely that critical realism's influence in institutionalism will grow in coming years. Post-Keynesians and Marxists have had ongoing discussions regarding the strengths and weakness of critical realism. Institutionalists should have a similar discussion. This paper addresses a key feature of the critical realist program: its critique of mainstream economics. In particular, it criticizes the use by critical realists of the concept of closure, and argues that critical realism is misleading in its identification of the ontology of mainstream economics as Humean. The purpose of the paper is to promote critical discussion regarding the role of critical realism in institutionalism.

After Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Mitchell, and John R. Commons, Walton H. Hamilton (1881–1958) was one of the leading figures in American institutional economics in the interwar period (Rutherford, 2000, 2001, 2003). Indeed, Hamilton (1916: 863 n.) originally coined the very term ‘institutional economics’. He announced its existence and defined its essential outlook at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in December 1918 (Hamilton, 1919). Institutional economics then emerged in America as a broad movement, attracting support from a large number of leading economists. Significantly, ‘Hamilton should be credited with having played the role of chief promoter’ (Dorfman, 1974: 28).