New Institutional Economics (NIE) has skyrocketed in scope and influence over the last three decades. This first Handbook of NIE provides a unique and timely overview of recent developments and broad orientations. Contributions analyse the domain and perspectives of NIE; sections on legal institutions, political institutions, transaction cost economics, governance, contracting, institutional change, and more capture NIE's interdisciplinary nature. This Handbook will be of interest to economists, political scientists, legal scholars, management specialists, sociologists, and others wishing to learn more about this important subject and gain insight into progress made by institutionalists from other disciplines. This compendium of analyses by some of the foremost NIE specialists, including Ronald Coase, Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom, and Oliver Williamson, gives students and new researchers an introduction to the topic and offers established scholars a reference book for their research.

Read examines probability, risk, and uncertainty through the contributions of John von Neumann, Leonard Jimmie Savage, Kenneth Arrow and Harry Markowitz. These Portfolio Theorists provided us with a dramatic leap forward in our understanding of and insights into financial rewards under risk and uncertainty.

Most economists assume that the mathematical and quantative sides of their science are relatively recent developments. Measurement, Quantification and Economic Analysis shows that this is a misconception. Its authors argue that economists have long relied on measurement and quantification as essential tools. However, problems have arisen in adapting these tools from other fields. Ultimately, the authors are sceptical about the role which measurement and quantification tools now play in contemporary economic theory.

This book presents the building blocks of Islamic economics as meso-science, offering an in-depth study of the Qur’anic worldview of the monotheistic unity of knowledge, which is the universal and unique message of Tawhid in the Qur’an. This primal ontological premise is formalised in an analytical approach that introduces and unpacks the philosophical concepts of ontology, epistemology, and phenomenology in relation to the Tawhidi methodological worldview. The analysis of Qur’anic logical consistency is then cast in a phenomenological perspective by applying the complete model of the unity of knowledge of the Qur’an in a specific study of the Tawhidi methodological approach to Islamic financial-economic theory. In doing so, it tackles the problems of meso-economics given its socio-scientific holism in world affairs. It hones in on the results of the symbiotic modulation of evolutionary learning processes in the world system of the unity of knowledge and its material embedding across knowledge, and knowledge-induced space and time dimensions. The author poses that Shari’ah is only partial in its scope, and excludes an analytical methodological worldview. Shari’ah is thus cast in the midst of a meso-socio-scientific absence of any appertaining methodology. The book is a landmark work in the conceptual and applied understanding of Tawhid as the methodological worldview of the monotheistic unity of knowledge in the meso-socio-scientific realm of ‘everything’, particularised to Islamic economics. Adopting an inter-disciplinary view integrating various fields, it challenges pervasive Western academic and institutional thinking in terms of economics. It will be of interest to students and researchers in Islamic economics, religious theory, Islamic philosophy, development studies, and finance.

The quest for a systematic unity of the universe in all of its manifestations is a common topic in Western thought. In this book the author shows what Islam can bring to this field of human enquiry. Defining a paradigm of Islamic political economy and world systems, he presents a study of epistemology in the light of general systems derived from the Qur'anic premise. The result is an intellectual endeavour without any dogmatic or reglious and philosophoical enquiry. First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This highly original book presents an alternative vision of globalization and explores the epistemology, derived from the Qur'an and the Prophetic guidance Sunnah, that underpins the systemic unity at the heart of the Islamic concept of world-system. Choudhury's investigation reveals the ethical foundations that influence the development of law, markets and social contract in Islamic societies. He then applies his methodology to issues and problems such as property rights, money, political economy, technology diffusion, microenterprise development and asset evaluation.

Islamic Financial Economy and Islamic Banking, is a thorough, deeply conceptual, analytical and applied work in the area of epistemological foundation of Islamic world-system. The book presents a new frontier of original contribution to the theme of generalized-system model of shari’ah. The model, derived from the Qur’an and Sunnah (Prophetic guidance) incorporates a wide analytical coverage of the purpose and objective of the Islamic worldview (maqasid as-shari’ah) in Islamic economics and finance in particular. The author covers issues that contrast with the existing understanding of Islamic economics and finance, including some specific goals defining the field and how they compare in today’s unstable world of financial volatility. A new heterodox thinking in economic theory is outlined. The potential as to how such issues can be addressed by the Tawhidi epistemology in formulating the generalized-system model of the purpose and objective of shari’ah lead the way in this book. Its presentation and analysis, methods and approach, overarch the fields of philosophy of science, rigorous analysis, mathematical and other presentations of the understanding given, and all taken up in the light of the exegesis of the Qur’an and coverage of the Sunnah. The result is a substantive one in the field of scholarship and application; and in analytically proving the universality and uniqueness of the epistemic worldview for the academic and practitioner world at large. The totality of the multiverse diversity of issues and problems reviewed comprise the study of the world-system by the Tawhidi methodological approach. Yet this methodology and its empirical configuration are universally applicable to all users without any need for unnecessary religious overtone.

"Funded in part by The Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute, University of Minnesota"--Title page.

This book brings together a collection of seven papers on Transaction Cost Economics by Nobel Laureate Professor Oliver E Williamson. The applications of Transaction Cost Economics are extensive, ranging from the field of industrial organization and applied fields of economics such as labor, public finance, comparative economic systems and economic development, to the business fields of strategy, organizational behavior, marketing, finance, operations management, and accounting. In short, as Williamson states, "any problem that originates as or can be reformulated as a contracting problem can be examined to advantage in transaction cost economizing terms." What is referred to as New Institutional Economics is developed in the West in two mainly complementary ways: Property Rights Theory, and Transaction Cost Economics. Of the two, Property Rights Theory developed more rapidly. Transaction Cost Economics has nonetheless taken shape of late. In China, research on New Institutional Economics began in the 1990s and has grown rapidly since. China has similarly given much more attention to Property Rights Theory. Gengxuan Chen, the editor of this volume, recommends that China will benefit by bringing Transaction Cost Economics to bear. Simultaneously, for scholars who study the market economy, Transaction Cost Economics provides a very attractive way to explain the practice of the Chinese market economy.