Geoffrey Hodgson
| Geoffrey Hodgson | |
|---|---|
Geoffrey Hodgson
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| Born | 28 July 1946 |
| Nationality | British |
| Field | Institutional economics, History of economic thought |
| School or tradition |
Institutional economics |
| Influences | Thorstein Veblen |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Geoffrey Martin Hodgson (born 28 July 1946) is a Research Professor of Business Studies in the University of Hertfordshire, and also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics.
Hodgson is recognised as one of the leading figures of modern critical institutionalism which carries forth the critical spirit and intellectual tradition of the founders of institutional economics, particularly that of Thorstein Veblen. His broad research interests span from evolutionary economics and history of economic thought to Marxism and theoretical biology. He first became known for his book Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics (1988), which criticises modern 'mainstream' economics and calls to revise economic theory on the new grounds of institutionalism. His reputation has become enhanced owing to the trilogy of more recent books – Economics and Utopia (1999), How Economics Forgot History (2001) and The Evolution of Institutional Economics (2004) all of which built Hodgson's arguments into a more rounded and powerful critique of mainstream economic theory.
In 1988, Hodgson was involved in setting up the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE). He was its general secretary until 1998. In 2000 Hodgson co-founded The Other Canon, a center and network for heterodox economics research, with main founder and executive chairman Erik Reinert and others. In 2013, Hodgson co-founded the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR). In his 2015 book "Conceptualizing Capitalism" and an article entitled "Legal Institutionalism", he sketched his own research program of a legal institutionalism.
According to Hodgson, institutions are the stuff of social life. He defines them in a 2006 article by saying that institutions are "the systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interaction". Examples of institutions may be language, money, law, systems of weights and measures, table manners and organisations (for example firms). Conventions, that may be included in law, can be regarded to be institutions as well (Hodgson, 2006, p. 2).
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