ABSTRACT
THE FOCUS OF THE PRESENT paper is on general, abstract regularities in the evolution of socioeconomic institutions. In its orientation, the paper follows recent contributions by Taylor (1976), Ullmann-Margalit (1978), Thompson and Faith (1981), Schotter (1981, 1986) that have been inspired by game theory. Although they differ in method, these recent contributions all follow more or less explicitly the tradition of what will be labeled here the Smith-Menger-Hayek conjecture of a ‘spontaneous’, i.e., unintended and unplanned, emergence of institutions. Adam Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand” and Adam Ferguson’s conjecture that institutions are “the result of human action but not of human design” express the basic idea. It has been restated independently by Menger (1883) and, more recently, has been extensively elaborated by Hayek (e.g. 1967, for a survey see Vanberg, 1986).
