This article critically examines the governance of international climate finance through a climate justice lens. It focuses on how structural inequalities and institutional constraints are biased towards vulnerable and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The article draws on heterodox economics literature, including the original institutional economics (OIE), Post Keynesian Institutionalism (PKI), and the climate justice framework, and makes an argument that global climate finance mechanisms tend to perpetuate the historic inequalities based on centralized governance, donor agenda, and market-oriented allocation models. By synthesizing some evidence, the article demonstrates how procedural, distributive, and recognition injustices stand in the way of equitable climate action. It concludes with policy and governance recommendations for embedding climate justice in finance systems and strengthening the participation and agency of vulnerable communities.
This article analyzes how enabling myths shape culturally specific patterns of social organization and reproduce intersecting systems of oppression under neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on Original and Radical Institutional Economics, culture is understood as a historically grounded set of habits of thought that evolves through institutional processes and is colonized by capitalist vested interests. Enabling myths are imposed as universalized legitimations of particular forms of social organization while obscuring relations of power and invidious distinctions. However, rather than functioning uniformly, these myths interact heterogeneously with distinct cultural environments, producing cumulative and context-dependent outcomes. The article advances an intersectional account of enabling myths to explain how different social groups experience power relations in uneven ways, emphasizing the colonial character of neoliberal myths as they mobilize multiple axes of oppressions-such as race, gender, and class-across historical and geographical contexts. Building on Radical Institutionalism's understanding of power as institutionally structured and centralized in hegemonic dominance, the analysis examines how enabling myths contribute to cultural reductionism and constrain the emergence of resistance. The Brazilian myth of racial democracy is discussed as an illustrative case.
This article examines how predictable labor-market changes associated with the diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) may affect economic power relations and institutional structures in the United States. Previous technological waves in the United States were largely routine- and skill-biased, contributing to job polarization and the concentration of labor-market power among highly educated, well-paid workers in nonroutine cognitive occupations. Gen-AI introduces a qualitatively different dynamic, as its disruptive potential is expected to be strongest precisely in these occupations, reducing the scarcity and exclusivity that underpinned their bargaining power. As technological displacement risks extend to influential segments of the labor force, broader societal support for institutional reforms aimed at redistributing rising economic output amid declining human input may emerge. This development points to the renewed relevance of insights from Original Institutional Economics, particularly regarding the distinction between property and economic power and the conditions under which technological progress may facilitate progressive institutional change.
Informal institutions are believed to hinder women's entrepreneurship. However, some formal (legal) institutions (laws) may support women entrepreneurs' endeavors, yet it is not clear which ones. In this article, we analyze whether the purportedly women entrepreneurship-friendly legal changes introduced in some Sub-Saharan African countries have delivered on their promises. We quantitatively determine if laws intended to promote women's entrepreneurship do what they are intended to do. We found that formal institutions, such as those that prohibit credit discrimination, enhance mobility, make marriages and asset access more equal, and increase the number of women who engage in entrepreneurship.
The 2015 Fund & atilde;o dam collapse in Mariana (Brazil) exposed a systemic Achilles' heel in the governance of hydrological commons. This article argues that economic power asymmetries embedded in a mining-dependent regional political economy appear to bias regulatory mechanisms, reorienting them from instrumental problem-solving toward ceremonial validation of the status quo. Drawing on Original Institutional Economics and theory-testing process tracing, the study examines how corporate actors and specific state licensing agencies co-constructed a regulatory environment conducive to escalating risk. The analysis documents that (i) licensing conditionalities displaced precaution, (ii) basin-committee agendas excluded dam safety, and (iii) the Renova Foundation institutionalized cost-shifting, and it treats the Foundation not merely as a buffer, but as a mechanism for converting open-ended social liabilities into bounded and administratively programmable expenses. To counteract these pathologies, the article proposes Institutional Scaffolding-design heuristics centered on epistemic independence and democratic auditability-while critically assessing failure modes.
The article argues that political decolonization in Africa did not dismantle the deeper economic and institutional architecture of the colonial system. Drawing on original institutional economics-especially Thorstein Veblen's dichotomy between ceremonial and instrumental institutions, John R. Commons' theory of working rules, William Dugger's analysis of predatory institutions, and John Kenneth Galbraith's framework of countervailing power-the article shows how colonial habits of thought, rules of governance, and structures of accumulation continue to shape African economic outcomes. These institutional legacies reproduce extractive patterns described by dependency theorists, constrain productive capacity, limit monetary sovereignty, and entrench vulnerability to external shocks. Building on earlier contributions to the theory of institutional adjustment, the article explains why Africa's structural transformation has been systematically blocked and how a new institutional architecture can enable what might be called a "real-life Wakanda"-a sovereign, resilient, and justice-centered development model. Incorporating a contemporary reading of Veblen's Engineers and the Price System, the article concludes with a solutions-oriented framework emphasizing the transformation of working rules, state capacity, monetary and industrial sovereignty, and the creation of new forms of countervailing power at domestic, regional, and transnational levels.
Capitalism once again stands at a crossroads. Contemporary neoliberalism has witnessed a resurgence of fascist values, raising the prospect that the future may resemble a troubling past. At the same time, technofeudalism has gained prominence as a potential successor to capitalism, describing a transformation into a rent-extractive regime in which technology corporations accumulate wealth through monopolistic predation. A further alternative form of economic organization in the twenty-first century is market socialism, most notably represented by the Chinese model. This article offers an institutionalist examination of capitalism's possible trajectories-toward fascism, technofeudalism, or market socialism. We argue that an Original Institutional Economics framework provides valuable insights into strategies for confronting the emerging economic order.
Policy choices and price relationships frequently guide the transition from one energy source to another. Policy choices, such as feed-in tariffs and the subsidization of technological change, alter price relationships. In the recent past, state resource portfolio standards, along with the decline in the cost of renewable technologies, created a preference for wind and solar generation to meet new generation requirements. However, the sudden and dramatic growth in data center demand for electricity may reverse this trend because stakeholders are calling for an increased reliance on natural gas, nuclear power, and coal plants. This article focuses on how the power to control the size of the market and to control who gets access to the market provides the power to withhold service, leading to the ability to control what is built and who pays for it. Because the power to withhold supply is often embedded within the administrative rules of a regional transmission organization, changes in PJM's rules will influence what type of plant will be built. Simultaneously, there is a struggle to determine who will pay for the resources needed to meet the increased data center demand for electricity. That struggle occurs in front of state regulatory commissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency's Quad-O regulation's objective is to reduce methane emissions; however, its effects on industry output and international crude oil and natural gas prices remain poorly understood. Quad-O increased international prices for crude oil, natural gas, conventional gas, diesel, and aviation fuel, but did not produce uniform effects on firm returns across upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors. While the regulation's implementation had limited effects on most firm returns, equipment and services, and transportation and pipeline sectors experienced adverse returns following the Quad-O announcement. Although consumers faced higher energy prices, these sectoral return differential effects suggest that oil and gas consumers bore a larger share of the regulatory burden.
This article continues the analysis of gambling deregulation from an institutional economics perspective done in the article "The Menace of Competition and Gambling Deregulation" by Atkinson, Nichols, and Oleson. John R. Commons' concept of the "menace of competition" is used to analyze how gambling industry laws have been gradually changed in the last decades of the twentieth century, which, in turn, helps the industry to grow throughout the United States. Since the article's publication, much has changed with gambling in the US. Sports gambling has grown dramatically since it was allowed beyond Nevada beginning in 2018, and casinos and lotteries have somewhat peaked. They are not growing as in the past, and horse racing gambling has shrunk dramatically. Charitable gaming has also suffered, and dog racing has almost disappeared. Additionally, online gambling has made it easier than ever before to make wagers and play lotteries and slots. As gambling has proliferated across the US since the late 1970s, some of the newly legal forms of gambling have cannibalized much of the revenues of other ones that have been around longer. Not only can Commons' writings still be used to assess recent developments, but also those of Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezey and Thorstein Veblen.
An extended version of the talk given upon receiving AFEE's 2025 Veblen-Commons Award. It shows a "German" way towards Evolutionary Institutional Economics in an Original Institutional Economics perspective. That "road" was rooted in the Younger German Historical and German Social Economics Schools (1920s and 1930s), which had survived Nazism and WWII through German economist-refugees gathering at the "University in Exile" in New York 1933 and the following years. Biographical and organizational processes were interrelated in the 1980s through the establishment of EAEPE with the support of AFEE. The contributions in the last forty-five years have been epistemological (economics as a contested multiparadigmatic discipline and Kuhnian losses in the mainstream), HET-related (e.g., retrieving Adam Smith's theory of institutional emergence), and real-world based as regards regional and industrial networking and policies. We elaborated on institutional emergence, with careful modeling and hermeneutics, on the conceptualization of institutions and Veblen's institutional dichotomy, and critical factors of institutional development, adding logical and computational dimensions. We analyzed issues such as general trust, social leverage, hybrid and embedded organization, complex innovation, and institutional collapse, and fields such as meso-economics, the theory of institutional change, and institutional complexity economics. Value change, policy conceptions, and methodological reflection have been integral to these efforts.
Earned Wage Access (EWA) providers advertise their services as early access to earned wages. However, products vary significantly in design, fees, repayment, and risk to the consumer. In this article, we summarize the arguments of EWA advocates and critics. Much of the controversy involves differences between employer-integrated and direct-to-consumer (D2C) EWA models. The former uses payroll data to limit draws to wages already accrued. No "repayment" is required since the funds advanced have already been earned. Users may pay subscription, transaction, and/or expediting fees. Some employers subsidize these costs. In contrast, D2C products do not access payroll data. They rely on consumers' bank account transaction histories. D2C firms impose subscription fees, coerced "tips," and/or expedited transfer fees. Firms recover their principal and fees by debiting the consumer's bank account. Our article closes with a review of the unsettled legal landscape. At the federal level, this includes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB's) problematic 2020 advisory opinion, its rescission of that opinion in January 2025, and its proposed, but never enacted, regulation of EWA products. We also summarize state legislative efforts. We argue that legislators and regulators must differentiate between firms offering early paydays and those engaging in fintech payday lending.
The nature of policy reform needed in the face of the polycrisis of the twenty-first century remains a serious point of contention. Many scholars have argued that there is a fundamental split in the OIE (Original Institutional Economics) community between Veblenian radical approaches and Commons' incremental or pragmatic approaches. In the camp with Commons, scholars have included Clarence Ayres and John Dewey as using incremental and pragmatic approaches to reform and change. This split was evident, probably going back to the 1930s. The question raised here is whether there is a reconciliation that can be conceived of to try and overcome this divide. For a long time, going back to the 1930s, the Commons (and Dewey and Ayres) approaches were considered to narrow the field of potential changes that could be considered. This article considers the specific notion of institution that was being used by Veblen and Commons and the differences and similarities in their approaches. Underlying their definitions were explicit and implicit notions of power and collective action. This exposition of institutional concepts can help clarify the two founders' thinking on policy reform and perhaps pave the way for a partial reconciliation of views on policy reform and change. This article will use documentation found in the Commons' archive to shed further light on this ongoing debate, along with previous writings by other scholars.
This article discusses the key concepts and main stylized facts concerning household real income and income inequality in the United States in recent decades. It explains the widely used summary measures of income distribution, which reveal that income inequality in the United States has been steadily rising. It explores the economic implications and social consequences of the evolution of household real income and income inequality, and considers ongoing debates about policy measures to mitigate the adverse effects of elevated income inequality, such as basic income support and job guarantees.
Although economic insecurity has always existed, the process of the powerful shifting precarity to others began with the English enclosure movement and has persisted since that time. As Karl Polanyi notes, an important factor is the speed at which fundamental changes occur, which affects the ability of communities to adapt to them. To illustrate this point, I compare the case of modern enclosures in South Africa with that of premodern England.
This article examines commercial credit as a structural element of the circuit of capital. Commercial credit, unlike money-lending, arises when commodities are exchanged for promises of future payment, generating credit relations without an initial loan. By introducing the fictitious construct of triangular exchange mediated by fictitious money, the article resolves two analytical difficulties and reformulates commercial credit as a fusion of the general formula of capital with debt and the form of money-lending capital. The analysis clarifies the dual foundation of commercial credit and offers insights into the genealogy of credit creation and the origins of corporate financialization.
This article argues that the development of artificial intelligence threatens the process of progressive institutional change by severing the link between knowledge creation and knowledge diffusion. Progressive institutional change begins with the process of ceremonial encapsulation, where new instrumental methods of problem solving in the form of new technologies are captured by vested interests to reinforce their own dominant position, but ends with the broader adoption of such methods to areas beyond the initial adoption. Key to this process, however, is knowledge diffusion, whereby a greater portion of the community becomes more adept at using the new technology and can apply it to this wider range of problems. While the introduction of AI should follow this path, we use Stan Shih's smile curve framework, as extended by Cedric Durand and William Milberg, to demonstrate how intellectual monopoly capitalism concentrates AI's value among creators and IP owners, while reducing or eliminating the middle-stage employment where knowledge accumulation and diffusion occur. As argued here, the current employment crisis for recent college graduates is the outcome of this deepening smile curve. Without intervention, AI risks remaining permanently trapped in the stage of ceremonial encapsulation, serving only the dominant interests, rather than enabling progressive institutional change.
