ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the nature of economic sociology and (the old and new) institutional economics and the links and overlaps between them. Sections are devoted to economic sociology, the old institutional economics and the new institutional economics. While all these subdisciplines address the nature and role of institutions in the economy, there is significant internal variety in each case and a lack of clear conceptual boundaries between them. By contrast, the departmental structure of academia has built walls between economics and sociology and provided too few incentives for researchers to cross disciplinary boundaries. Yet innovation and advance would be stimulated by greater awareness of neighbouring disciplines, with a willingness to import relevant insights from across the divide. Interdisciplinary conversation is particularly important where there is a shared object of analysis – such as institutions.
