Media Contact:
Carrie Conko
Director of Communications
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Office: 703-993-4899
Email: cconko@gmu.edu
Learning in Time: New Institutionalism and the Central and Eastern European Economic Reform Experience
May 1, 2006
The article explores the conceptual dynamics set into motion by the encounter between the policy prescriptions inspired by the mainstream economics and the very concrete reform experience after 1989. The rise of the new institutionalism is discussed as one of the most significant reactions and epistemic outcomes of the reform experience. The article investigates how the limits of the mainstream approaches to reform policies invited a challenge from new perspectives and theories. It likewise traces and overviews the most critical areas in which intuitive and practical conclusions derived from the experience of transition converged with and supported the theoretical conclusions of the institutionalist approach. The article also outlines several key elements of the new institutionalist vision and its theoretical underpinning. The conclusion points the potential of the new approach to challenge at a foundational level the economics mainstream.
Keywords: new institutional economics; economic policy; economic reform; Central and Eastern Europe; post communist transition.
