Welcome to my home page.  Below are links to a brief bio-sketch and to a partial C.V.  Following that you will find links to my courses and to a few of my recent papers.

 

My research concerns the institutional foundations of an economy.  Economic institutions constitute the legal architecture of markets and of market processes.  All economies are constituted by their legal structures that give content to market processes and existing property regimes.  I am interested in the existing institutional arrangements in an economy, and I am interested in the process of institutional change.  My current research has two dominant themes--one of them philosophical and one of them empirical. 

 

The philosophical aspect, in which I develop the concept of volitional pragmatism, is spelled out in my most recent book:  SUFFICIENT REASON: Volitional Pragmatism and the Meaning of Economic Institutions (Princeton University Press, 2006).  The Amazon link is:  SUFFICIENT REASON . There is a Chinese version available from Shanghai People's Publishing House, No. 193 Fujian Zhong Rd., Shanghai 200001, China.

 

Volitional pragmatism offers a new approach to human action--one that challenges standard rational choice models central to economics.  In volitional pragmatism individuals "work out" what they want in the way of choice and action as they come to understand the choices available to them.  Volitional pragmatism builds on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, John R. Commons, Thorstein Veblen, and Richard Rorty.

 

The empirical aspect of my current research concerns the on-going problem of immiserization in much of Africa.  This empirical work connects with the philosophical aspect above because I trace persistent development problems in the African continent to a variety of pathologies that can be traced to what I call institutional incoherence.  Institutional incoherence refers to a situation in which the legal foundations of economic transactions are degraded and dysfunctional.  Most economic activity is stifled by low net returns.  It is often assumed that the African state smothers economic initiative and that therefore development assistance must be focused on NGOs and other "unofficial" parties.  I suggest that this development strategy is perverse.  If development is to come to the African continent it can only happen with a re-vitalized state leading the way.  The history of success in development is clear that markets only flourish when the state takes an active role in providing necessary infrastructure, in promoting particular sectors, and in securing the legal foundation for entrepreneurial activity.  The growth success of China over the past 20 years is clear evidence of what can happen when the state takes a central role in creating the political and legal underpinnings of the market. 

 

  BIO-SKETCH   

  PARTIAL C.V.                                           

  COURSES I TEACH                            

  Institutional Economics (graduate)

  The Environment and the Global Economy (undergraduate)

    

RECENT PAPERS AND PUBLICATIONS                 

    (click on the button at left for a pdf version)

 

    Abdicating Responsibility: The Deceits of Fisheries Policy (Fisheries 34(6):280-302).

    The Crisis in Ocean Governance: Conceptual Confusion, Spurious Economics, Political

          Indifference (MAST: Maritime Studies, 6(2):7-54).
 

    On the Origins and Evolving Role of Money (Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics,

           164:624-51, 2008, with Jean-Paul Chavas).

    Volitional Pragmatism (Ecological Economics, 68:1-13, 2008).

    The Economic Reach of the State: African Development Reconsidered (working paper).

     Beyond Market Failure: Volitional Pragmatism as a New Theory of Public Policy.

            (Economia Politica, 25(2):219-41, 2008).

     Editorial on South Africa's failed land reform program.

 

     Resource Degradation in the African Commons: Accounting for Institutional Decay,

           (Environment and Development Economics, 13:539-63, 2008).

 

     Environmental Regulations and the Problem of Sustainability: Moving Beyond

           "Market Failure" (Ecological Economics, 63:676-83, 2007).

 

     Formalising Property Relations in the Developing World: The Wrong Prescription

           for the Wrong Malady (Land Use Policy, 26:20-27, 2008).

 

     Rethinking Fisheries Policy in Alaska: Options for the Future.

 

    Crafting Environmental Policy in the Teeth of Possessive Individualism, (Raup Lecture,

           University of Minnesota).

 

     Evolutionary Institutional Change for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in Central and Eastern Europe.

 

     Understanding China’s Economic Transformation: Are There Lessons Here for the Developing World?

          (World Economics, 7(2):73-95, 2006).

 
     Purging the Frontier From Our Mind: Crafting a New Fisheries Policy, (Reviews in Fish Biology

          and Fisheries, 15:217-29, 2005).

 

     Modeling Population and Resource Scarcity in 14th Century England, (Journal of Agr. Economics

          56(2):217-37, 2005, with Jean-Paul Chavas).     

 

     Reconsidering Environmental Policy: Prescriptive Consequentialism and Volitional Pragmatism,

         (Environmental and Resource Economics, 28(1):73-99, May 2004).  

 

     Property and Fisheries for the Twenty-First Century: Seeking Coherence from Legal and Economic

          Doctrine, (Vermont Law Review, 28:623-61, 2004, with Seth Macinko).  

 

     Property Rights: Locke, Kant, Peirce and the Logic of Volitional Pragmatism (in: Private Property in

          the 21st Century, ed. by Harvey M. Jacobs, Cheltenham, U.K.: Elgar, 2004, chapter 2).