〈社会経済システムの制度分析〉に向けて

「制度の経済学」への一視点

抄録

The object of this paper is to examine various developments in ‘the Economics of Institutions’ since the 1970s and to make some comparisons between three kinds of institutionalism, that is, the ‘new’ institutional economics, paticularly of Willamson and North, the ‘modern’ institutional economics of Hodgson, and ‘the comparative institutional analysis’ of Aoki and Okuno. From these comparisons we reach three subjects to be further explored. The first point is that the core of the questions is the nature of the human agent and the scope for rationality. The second point is to construct an alternative theory of individual behavior to the neoclassical economist's assumption of maximizing behavior, related to the socio-economic context of social relations and institutions. The final point is to formulate the circular causation between the consciousness and action of the human agent (i. e., the microanalysis of the socio-economic system) and conventions, social norms and institutions (i. e., the macroanalysis of the socio-economic system). Following the conceptualization of Shiozawa, we call this circular causation the ‘micro-macro loop’. It is the analysis of this ‘micro-macro loop’ that is the most important for our approach to ‘the economics of institutions.’ Special emphasis should be laid on the loop of causation from ‘macro’ to ‘micro’ because the three kinds of institutional economics which have been examined here leave this loop untouched. We therefore conclude that ‘the economics of institutions’ should be a reproduction-theoretic analysis of the socio-economic system based on the investigations of the ‘mico-macro loop’ which is linked together with a set of institutions.