Discussant Remarks

It has been the rage in this "triple aught" year to reflect upon the events of both the past 100 and the past 1,000 years, to identify and assess the significant achievements and failures occurring during the period of interest, and to speculate about the future that will likely unfold as the years march on. Institutional economics is widely understood to have its genesis in the writings of Thorstein Veblen, whose work first appeared only slightly more than 100 years ago. Hence, a year ago, when thinking about the upcoming program, I thought the Year 2000 appeared to be an appropriate time to subject institutional economics to the same sort of retrospective examination. I then decided to organize a panel for a session titled, "Institutional Economics at the Millennium: Its Past and Future," which is the title of this session. As incoming president of AFEE, I thought it would be permissible for me to use this opportunity to explain what I had in mind in putting the session together, rather than to formally discuss the papers. Guided by motives that I will indicate shortly, I decided to put together an "allstar" panel consisting of both "notables" capable of providing an authoritative retrospective assessment of institutional economics' past and/or whose work points to currently unseen possibilities regarding its future. I believe I had spectacular success in assembling such a panel, for we are fortunate to have had before us an exceptionally distinguished group. Warren Samuels, the 1995 recipient of the Veblen-Commons award, is arguably the most prominent self-identified institutional economist alive today, and the breadth and depth of his published writings are, to put it bluntly, astonishing. Malcolm Rutherford, who recently served as president of the History of Economics Society, is the most able and insightful historian of economics currently writing about the history of institutional economics. Geoff Hodgson, who played a pivotal role in the founding of our sister organization, the European Asso-