This interdisciplinary series promotes original theoretical and empirical research as well as integrative syntheses involving links between individual choice, institutions, and social outcomes. Contributions are welcome from across the social sciences, particularly in the areas where economic analysis is joined with other disciplines, such as comparative political economy, new institutional economics, and behavioral economics.

While debates over the consequences of climate change are often pessimistic, historical data from the past two centuries indicate many viable opportunities for responding to potential changes. This volume takes a close look at the ways in which economies—particularly that of the United States—have adjusted to the challenges climate change poses, including institutional features that help insulate the economy from shocks, new crop varieties, irrigation, flood control, and ways of extending cultivation to new geographic areas. These innovations indicate that people and economies have considerable capacity to acclimate, especially when private gains complement public benefits. Options for adjusting to climate change abound, and with improved communication and the emergence of new information and technologies, the potential for adaptation will be even greater in the future.

This volume presents a series of perspectives that evaluate the merits of and potential for establishing institutionalized social valuation protocols within university settings. The volumes open with a comprehensive overview of the existing literature that addresses issues related to assessing the social value of university innovations. The first section provides sociological, organizational, and economic perspectives on issues informing the forecasting and/or demonstrating the social value of university innovations. The second section explores potential metrics and measures for either forecasting or demonstrating the social and economic value of university innovations. The third section concludes by considering issues of governance over and the organizational positioning institutionalized protocol for forecasting and demonstrating the social and economic value of university innovations.

Eco entrepreneurship (the provision of new products, processes, services with environmental benefits) is not well understood regarding its motives, returns, products, services, organization, and property rights. However, as public concern about the environment rises, understanding the relationship between entrepreneurship and the environment is increasingly important. This volume examines the environmental entrepreneur and the role of property rights in encouraging eco entrepreneurship, and uses micro economics to assess whether eco entrepreneurship is fundamentally different from more general entrepreneurship.

Institutions and Economic Performance. Edited by Helpman Elhanan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. ISBN: vii + 611 pp. Tables, figures, references, index. Cloth, $55.00. ISBN: 978-0-674-03077-0. - Volume 83 Issue 3

The weather-information problem faced by settlers of semi-arid regions of the Great Plains hindered their attempts to adapt their crops, techniques, and farm sizes. Episodes of homestead settlement and collapse in western Kansas in 1893-1894 and in eastern Montana in 1917-1921 are examined. A Bayesian learning model indicates how new climate information was incrementally incorporated to revise views of agricultural prospects. Primary data show homesteaders' lagged response to new drought information and illustrate drought's differential impact on small farms. Dryfarming doctrine, despite its optimistic claims, was an imperfect response to drought. Indeed, some dryfarming practices hastened homestead failure.