INTRODUCTION

The recent awards of Nobel Prizes to Ronald Coase and Douglass North are but one indication of a growing theoretical interest within economics in the nature and role of social institutions. Indeed, there has already appeared a large body of literature bearing the flag of the New Institutional Economics (Langlois 1986a, 1993). This book is intended as a contribution in this developing tradition, albeit a contribution with a focus on one specific set of social institutions: what we call business institutions.