This paper assesses how to quantitatively classify countries as conforming to the ideal of an ‘open access order’ in the spirit of Douglass North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry Weingast's Violence and Social Orders. It does so by taking the harmonic mean of already existing measures of economic freedom, liberal democracy, and state capacity. Thirty-five countries out of 161 in 2020 were assessed to be open access orders. A main dataset is constructed for the years 1950 to present, and a supplementary dataset for select countries is constructed for years back to 1850. Switzerland has the highest index score for open access orders in 2020, is classified to be an open access order continuously since 1950, and is the first country to be classified as an open access order (in 1875).

Lack of economic data based on ethnicity makes the study of minority economies in linguistically or ethnically mixed regions problematic. Yet, there is much to learn from these hard cases of economic development in terms of the policies that guarantee ethnic or linguistic survival and reproduction. The present article investigates the long-term economic development of the Slovenian minority in Italy between 1954 and 2020. It does so by applying the theoretical framework by new institutional economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (2005), which looks at the dynamic role of political and economic institutions for the generation of economic growth. The parable of this community’s economy shows that political power and economic success can be flimsy and ephemeral. Strategic, long-term economic planning and, especially, contingent planning against foreseeable risks, both of which require the systematic collection of accurate data and the coordination of representative organizations, are key to successful reproduction and sustained growth.

This contribution commemorates Oliver Williamson, who recently passed away, as one of the founding fathers of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE). It does so by touching on some of the details of his personal life and connecting these with his professional career. The latter was devoted to putting the study of institutions on the economic agenda. Closer scrutiny reveals that three phases may be identified. Williamson first developed an interest in analysing vertical integration. During the second phase, he elaborated this interest in TCE, and during the third, he positioned his contributions within the area of institutional economics. Furthermore, the article considers the various influences of institutional and organizational economists on Williamson. Finally, the article considers the reception, criticism, and further elaborations of Williamson's contributions.

Behavioral scientists have begun to research ‘sludge,’ excessive frictions that make it harder for people to do what they want to do. Friction is also an important concept in transaction-cost economics. Nevertheless, sludge has been discussed without explicit referral to transaction costs. Several questions arise from this observation. Is the analogy to friction used differently in both literatures? If so, what are the key differences? If not, should we develop the concept of sludge when the well-established literature on transaction costs already exists? This conceptual article shows that sludge and transaction costs are related, but distinct, concepts, and that the literature on sludge can benefit from incorporating elements from transaction-cost research. For example, we suggest defining sludge as aspects of the choice architecture that lead to the experience of costs, organize sludges using a typology inspired by the transaction-cost literature, highlight specificity, uncertainty, and frequency as important determinants of the ‘sludginess’ of choice architecture, and show that sludge audits can be conducted using methods developed in the transaction-cost literature.

The rise of neoliberal agendas of political actors and a wave of privatisation in the globalisation era have often been followed by anti-privatisation strikes. These are union strikes against the privatisation process and against contracting out and opening markets to competition. The article presents the distinction between different versions of constitutionalism regarding anti-privatisation strikes. It discusses two approaches to constitutionalism – the economic approach and the collective approach – and their manifestation in the case law of Israel and the United Kingdom.

The collective approach suggests the recognition of a constitutional status of collective rights as a basis for counter-balancing the neoliberal practices of regulators and political actors. Following the effects of liberalisation on the labour market – both in influencing union organisational capacity and in weakening job security of individual employees, the collective approach is aimed at protecting employees’ rights in a globalised-privatised era. Within the collective approach, constitutionalism is used as a basis for recognising anti-privatisation strikes. In contrast, the economic approach denies the existence of a constitutional right to strike against privatisation.

The article presents an eclectic model which merges the two approaches, and advocates its adoption. Drawing on New Institutional Economics, the eclectic model offers a theory for moderating the constitutionalism practice and developing partial and restrained constitutionalism. It proposes the adoption of a constitutional right to strike against privatisation, when its application reduces transaction costs and advances efficiency and economic goals for the benefit of the public.

This article explores the challenges of redefining property rights for land, with application to monarchical Iraq from 1944 to 1958. We apply two processes in the analysis of economic institutions to study history: a puzzle-solving method at the micro level, with broader interest in the role of institutions in development and economic growth at the macro level. Thus, we explore the interaction between demanders and suppliers of land reform in the political market, focusing on the parliamentary influence of big landholders as an interest group. We conclude that despite increasing demand for land reform, politicians were able to supply quantitative change only, consisting of the allocation of newly arable land to landless cultivators, rather than the redistribution of existing assets or qualitative change. We analyse these findings in relation to our concern for the role of institutions in development. Our discussion uncovers key insights into Iraq's political economy and its institutions.

Blockchain technology has been considered a vehicle to foster development in poor countries by promoting applications such as secure delivery of humanitarian aid, digital identity services, and proof of provenance. This article examines whether (and if so, how) blockchain technology can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of foreign aid governance, thereby moving beyond completely anonymous contexts. Foreign aid governance is plagued by lack of credible commitments among states, which are further exacerbated by information asymmetries and which often undermine aid effectiveness. In this context, blockchain technology holds two promises. First, through the guaranteed execution of smart contracts, it can strengthen the credibility of state commitments, for example collective burden-sharing rules among a group of donors or recipient country compliance with policy conditionality in return for aid. Second, through leveraging prediction markets, blockchain technology can allay information problems related to the verification of real-world events along the entire aid delivery chain.

Organizations often face the challenge of institutional complexity, which involves incompatible prescriptions from multiple institutional logics. To deal with this challenge, prior researchers have proposed several strategies to tackle conflicts within and between organizations. The success of these solutions fundamentally hinges on achieving clarity. However, while clarity often brings further conflicts for both internal and external stakeholders, I argue that ambiguity logic is an alternative approach to deal with institutional complexity as it creates space for negotiations and potential solutions. As such, this paper proposes five research propositions that examine when ambiguous language and behavior can be better used to deal with institutional complexity. In general, the use of ambiguity logic is associated with power. Specifically, ambiguity logic is better applied in organizations when power is more evenly distributed among the stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate – in an argumentative style – that once we refrain from the usual neoclassical assumptions and integrate transaction costs, imperfect foresight and bounded rationality into present neoclassical (spot and futures) market theory, we get a more realistic perception of the decentralisation of intertemporal economic decision making. The failure of most futures markets for goods and services is compensated by firms (‘hierarchies’), which are led by entrepreneurs in the sense of Knight (1921) who may be seen as surrogate forward traders of goods and services. We claim that the ‘more realistic assumptions’ of New Institutional Economics, inter alia, provide a better perception of what takes place behind the veil of ‘money and finance’ than neoclassical economics, and why it makes sense to occasionally limit liability and, as a consequence, apply forms of private or public regulation. It might also help to explain some aspects of the financial crisis of 2008.