ABSTRACT
Recent years have witnessed a revival of interest in the study of institutions in economics. Accompanying this, there has come an increased awareness of the writings of earlier economists in which a focus on institutions is central. The work of Carl Menger occupies a significant position in this regard. Menger’s work is especially attractive to those who seek to distance themselves from the heterodox ‘old institutionalist’ school associated with the work of Thorstein Veblen, John. R. Commons, etc., and to produce instead a ‘new institutionalism’ more in line with the contemporary mainstream approach to ‘theorising’. Thus Langlois observes that:
It is perhaps fair to say that this modern institutionalism reflects less the ideas of the early institutionalists than it does those of their opponents…Menger has perhaps more claim to be the patron saint of the new institutional economics than has any of the original institutionalists.
