Efficiency and Social Institutions: Uses and Misuses of Economic Reasoning in Sociology

We review recent applications of the “new institutional economics” to a variety of social institutions. The applications use the idea of efficiency to account for the emergence and persistence of institutions such as the family, sharing groups, private property, discrimination, and the norm of reciprocity. Efficiency entails eliminating costly externalities with the least possible transaction costs (i.e. costs involved in negotiating, writing, and enforcing agreements). Our critique of efficiency shows how power relations, goal ambiguity. and the institutional relativism of choice render efficiency problematic. The sociological criterion of reproducibility may be more relevant where these features hold. If efficiency analysis is used, the sociologist should insist that it allow the identification of inefficiencies and that institutional participants welcome suggested improvements in efficiency.

[1]  Siegwart Lindenberg.  SHARING GROUPS - THEORY AND SUGGESTED APPLICATIONS , 1982 .

[2]  R. Pollak.  A Transaction Cost Approach to Families and Households , 1985 .

[3]  H. Leibenstein.  A Branch of Economics is Missing Micro-Micro Theory , 1979 .

[4]  James G. March,et al.  Organizing Political Life: What Administrative Reorganization Tells Us about Government , 1983, American Political Science Review.

[5]  R. Coase.  The Nature of the Firm , 1937 .

[6]  G. Becker,et al.  An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability , 1977, Journal of Political Economy.

[7]  G. Becker,et al.  A Treatise on the Family , 1982 .

[8]  E. M. Leifer.  Markets as Mechanisms: Using a Role Structure , 1985 .

[9]  H. White,et al.  Where do markets come from , 1981 .

[10]  R. Merton.  Social Theory and Social Structure , 1958 .

[11]  P. Oliver.  Rewards and Punishments as Selective Incentives for Collective Action: Theoretical Investigations , 1980, American Journal of Sociology.

[12]  C. Perrow.  Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay , 1975 .

[13]  K. Polanyi.  The Great Transformation , 1944 .

[14]  Michael X Cohen,et al.  Coping with Complexity: The Adaptive Value of Changing Utility , 1984 .

[15]  Thomas M. Palay,et al.  Comparative Institutional Economics: The Governance of Rail Freight Contracting , 1984, The Journal of Legal Studies.

[16]  J. Scanzoni.  Sexual Bargaining: Power Politics in the American Marriage , 1972 .

[17]  O. Williamson.  The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach , 1981, American Journal of Sociology.

[18]  Michael Hechter.  The Microfoundations of macrosociology , 1985 .

[19]  G. Becker,et al.  The Economic Approach to Human Behavior , 1978 .

[20]  Y. Ben-Porath,et al.  The F-connection: families friends and firms and the organization of exchange , 1980 .

[21]  Jack Hirshleifer,et al.  The Expanding Domain of Economics , 1985 .

[22]  O. Williamson.  The Economics of Governance: Framework and Implications , 1984 .

[23]  M. Hannan.  Families, Markets, and Social Structures: An Essay on Becker's A Treatise on the Family , 1982 .

[24]  K. Weick.  The social psychology of organizing , 1969 .

[25]  Y. Ben-Porath.  Economics and the Family-Match or Mismatch? A Review of Becker's A Treatise on the Family , 1982 .

[26]  T. Schelling.  The Strategy of Conflict , 1963 .

[27]  Johan P. Olsen,et al.  Ambiguity and choice in organizations , 1976 .

[28]  D. T. Armentano.  Antitrust and monopoly : anatomy of a policy failure , 1982 .

[29]  J. Umbeck.  A Theory of Contract Choice and the California Gold Rush , 1977, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[30]  William G. Ouchi,et al.  Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans. , 1980 .

[31]  J. M. Buchanan,et al.  An Economic Theory of Clubs , 1965 .

[32]  G. Becker.  A Treatise on the Family , 1982 .

[33]  H. Demsetz.  Toward a Theory of Property Rights , 1967 .

[34]  Sarah Fenstermaker Berk,et al.  SUPPLY-SIDE SOCIOLOGY OF THE FAMILY: The Challenge of the New Home Economics , 1983 .