ABSTRACT
Like the other contributors to this volume, I believe institutions, institutional analysis and institutional choice matter, but institutions, institutional analysis and institutional choice in a different sense. Virtually all questions of law and public policy necessitate the examination of choices between alternative decision-making processes such as the market, the political process, and the courts. These decision-making processes are “institutions” in my terms and it is the choice among them that I have used to understand law and public policy. Existing economic analysis of all sorts already centers on these institutional choices. But most of this economic analysis exhibits a peculiar feature: it analyzes institutional choice by focusing on the attributes of only one institution – most commonly, the market. This single institutional analysis violates both common sense and the most fundamental principles of economics.
