Institutional and Organizational Economics

Why do some countries succeed while others struggle? Why are some firms profitable while rivals fail? Why do some marriages thrive and others end in divorce? These questions seem unrelated, but societies, companies, and marriages have one important thing in common: they involve more than one individual. They thus face the same fundamental challenges. How can people be made to help rather than hurt each other? How can they use sacrifice, cooperation, and coercion to promote the common good? In this introductory text, Tore Ellingsen equips readers to answer essential questions around the success and failure of humans in groups, drawing on behavioral game theory, psychology, and sociology. He emphasizes how other-regarding preferences such as altruism and dutifulness matter for societies’ prosperity, and analyzes the role of culture in the form of shared values and understandings. One lesson is that cooperation is facilitated when people anticipate that they will hold common memories of past behavior, especially if agreements take precedence over leaders’ authority. A groundbreaking text, Institutional and Organizational Economics is essential reading for students and scholars of economics, political science, sociology, and public administration.

Preface 1 The Organizational Challenge 2 Sacrifice 3 Selfishness, Rationality, and Utility 4 Situations, Games, and Cooperation 5 Shared Understandings and Values 6 Predicting Behavior in Games 7 A Model of Anarchy 8 Changing the Game 9 Coordination 10 Authority’s Limitations 11 Relationships 12 Third-party Punishment 13 Coercion: Costs and Benefits 14 Contracts and Governance 15 Limited Liability and Corporate Finance 16 Asymmetric Information 17 Application: The Oil-Pool Problem 18 Conclusion 19 More Food for Thought 20 Further Reading Postface Answers to Exercises Notes References Index