Institutions, ideas and economic change: some reflections on Geoffrey Hodgson's ‘Culture and Institutions’

Professor Hodgson in his review of my A Culture of Growth (Princeton University Press, 2016) raises a number of important issues. One of them is the usefulness of the concept of a ‘market for ideas’ as an analytical tool in discussing the way cultural change affects economic change. Even though ther...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of institutional economics Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 169 - 174
Main Author Mokyr, Joel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.02.2022
Subjects
Bias
Conferences
Econometrics
Economic history
Social networks
Taboos
Technological change
Economic growth
evolutionary models
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Summary:Professor Hodgson in his review of my A Culture of Growth (Princeton University Press, 2016) raises a number of important issues. One of them is the usefulness of the concept of a ‘market for ideas’ as an analytical tool in discussing the way cultural change affects economic change. Even though there is no price mechanism that clears the market, many basic components of the economic analysis of markets carry through and enriched by evolutionary concepts. A second question is the importance of cultural entrepreneurs, who play an important role in my book. It should be stressed that such ‘Vital Few’ were rarely indispensable, yet their influence on subsequent events may have imparted a direction on events and accelerated them. In any event, the success of such entrepreneurs was an indication of an intellectual environment sufficiently open to new ideas to be consistent with major new ideas such as the possibility and desirability of sustained economic progress.
ISSN:1744-1374
1744-1382
DOI:10.1017/S1744137421000692