ABSTRACT
Oliver Williamson is the inventor of the term ‘new institutional economics’, which from the 1990s on came to refer to various active theoretical currents, united by the idea that ‘institutions matter’ and that these can be analysed with the instruments of standard economic theory – with certain adjustments. This expression, introduced in his book Markets and Hierarchies (1975: 1) undoubtedly implies a certain relationship with the ‘old institutional economics’, but his criticism of the latter remains much as it was in the neoclassical tradition.1
