The theory of institutions as “rules in equilibrium” was developed jointly with Frank Hindriks. Some commentaries have appeared in a symposium hosted by the Journal of Institutional Economics:
Aoki, Masahiko (2015) “Why is the equilibrium notion essential for a unified institutional theory? A friendly remark on the article by Hindriks and Guala.” Journal of Institutional Economics 11: 485-488. Link
Binmore, Ken (2015) “Institutions, rules and equilibria: a commentary.” Journal of Institutional Economics 11: 493-496. Link
Hodgson, Geoffrey (2015) “On defining institutions: rules versus equilibria.” Journal of Institutional Economics 11: 497-505. Link
Searle, John (2015) “Status functions and institutional facts: reply to Hindriks and Guala.” Journal of Institutional Economics 11: 507-514. Link
Smith, Vernon (2015) “Conduct, rules and the origins of institutions.” Journal of Institutional Economics 11: 481-483. Link
Sugden, Robert (2015) “On ‘common-sense ontology’: a comment on the paper by Frank Hindriks and Francesco Guala.” Journal of Institutional Economics 11: 489-492. Link
Frank and I have replied here.
The following reviews of my book, Understanding Institutions, include remarks on and critiques of the rules-in-equilibrium theory:
Cyril Hédoin in Oekonomia 6 (2016): 443-50. Link
Peter Vanderschraaf in Economics & Philosophy (2017). Link
Johannes Himmelreich in Journal of Social Ontology (2017). Link
Geoffrey Hodgson in Journal of Economic Methodology (2017). Link
Mark Risjord in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2018) Link
Christopher Clarke in BJPS Review of Books (2018) Link
Joachim Wiewiura in Erkenntnis (2020) Link
These commentaries have been published as a book symposium in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, followed by my replies:
Aydinonat, Emreh and Ylikoski, Petri (2018) “Three conceptions of a theory of institutions”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48, pp. 550-568.
Rabinowicz, W. (2018) “Are institutions rules in equilibrium? Comments on Guala’s Understanding Institutions“, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48, pp. 569-584.
Pacherie, Elisabeth (2018) “Solution thinking and team reasoning: how different are they?”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48, pp. 585-593.
Hauswald, Rico (2018) “Institution types and institution tokens: an unproblematic distinction?”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48, pp. 594-607.
Makela, Pekka, Hakli, Raul, and Amadae, S. M. (2018) “Understanding institutions without collective acceptance?”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48, pp. 608-629.
The rules-in-equilibrium account has been used to build institutional theories of fiction and art:
Abell, Catharine (2020) Fiction: A Philosophical Analysis. Oxford University Press. Link
Sen, Kiyohiro (2022) “An institutional theory of art categories”, Debates in Aesthetics 18: 31-43. Link
…and the debate goes on:
Rust, Joshua (2017) “On the relation between institutional statuses and technical artefacts: a proposed taxonomy of social kinds”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25: 704-722. Link
Hédoin, Cyril (2019) “Institutions, rule-following and conditional reasoning”, Journal of Institutional Economics 15: 1-25. Link
Hodgson, G. (2019) “Taxonomic definitions in social science, with firms, markets and institutions as case studies”, Journal of Institutional Economics 15: 207-233. Link
Agassi, Joseph and Jarvie, Ian (2019) “Institutions as a philosophical problem: a critical rationalist perspective on Guala’s ‘Understanding Institutions’ and his critics”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 49, pp. 42-63. Link
Brannmark, Johann (2019) “Institutions, ideology, and nonideal social ontology”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 49: 137-159. Link
Rust, Joshua (2019) “Institutional identity”, Journal of Social Ontology 5: 13-34. Link
Kaluzinski, Bartosz (2019) “Genuinely constitutive rules”, Organon F 26:597-611. Link
Hédoin, Cyril (2020) “History, analytic narratives, and the rules-in-equilibrium view of institutions”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 50: 391-417. Link
Vooys, Sarah and Dick, David G. (2021) “Money and mental contents”, Synthese 198: 3443–3458. Link
Hédoin, Cyril (2020) “History, analytic narratives, and the rules-in-equilibrium view of institutions”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 50:391-417. Link
Strohmaier, David (2020) “Social-computation-supporting kinds”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, online first. Link
Hédoin, Cyril (2021) “The Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account of institutions: A Contribution to a naturalistic social ontology”, Journal of Social Ontology 7: 73-96. Link
Ouzilou, Olivier (2021) “Entités institutionnelles et attitudes mentales”, Dialogue, online first. Link
Roversi, Corrado (2021) “In defence of constitutive rules”, Synthese 199: 14349–14370. Link
Zachnik, Vojtech (2022) “Institutional violations, costs and attitudes”, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, online first. Link
Shevchenko, Valerii (2023) “Coordination as Naturalistic Social Ontology: Constraints and Explanation”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, online first. Link
James, Aaron (2023) “Money, recognition, and the outer limits of obliviousness”. Synthese Link
Werner, K. (2023) “Who Asks Questions and Who Benefits from Answers: Understanding Institutions in Terms of Social Epistemic Dependencies”. Erkenntnis Link
Aydinonat, N. Emrah & Ylikoski, Petri (2023) “Explaining Institutional Change”, in H. Kincaid & J. van Bouwel (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Political Science, Oxford University Press. Link
Brännmark, Johan (2023). “Three sources of social indeterminacy”, Philosophical Studies, online first. Link
Stotts, M.H. (2024). “Moving from the mental to the behavioral in the metaphysics of social institutions”. Synthese 203, 123. Link
Several people have written comments on “Reciprocity: Weak or Strong?” – among them Chris Boehm, Sam Bowles, Richard Boyd, Peter Richerson, Simon Gachter, David Rand, Herb Gintis, Ernst Fehr, Jo Henrich, Elinor Ostrom, Don Ross, and Bob Sugden. They are all here, followed by my reply. The original paper is now widely cited – see for example:
van Lange, Rockenbach and Yamagishi (eds. 2014) Reward and Punishment in Social Dilemmas. Oxford University Press. Link
There is now more evidence on punishment ‘in the wild’, and it seems to vindicate the claims I made in the BBS article. I particularly recommend Daniel Balliet’s and Niko Nikiforakis’ work:
Balafoutas, L., Nikiforakis, N., & Rockenbach, B. (2014). “Direct and indirect punishment among strangers in the field”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111, 15924-15927. Link
Engelmann, D., & Nikiforakis, N. (2015). “In the long-run we are all dead: On the benefits of peer punishment in rich environments”. Social Choice and Welfare, 45, 561-577. Link
Molho, C., Tybur, J.M., Van Lange, P.A.M. & Balliet, D. (2020) “Direct and indirect punishment of norm violations in daily life”. Nature Communications 11 (1), 1-9. Link
Balliet, D., Molho, C., Columbus, S. & Cruz, T.D.D. (2021) “Prosocial and Punishment Behaviors in Everyday Life”. Current Opinion in Psychology, online first. Link
Cruz, T. D. D. et al (2021) “Gossip and reputation in everyday life”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 376: 20200301. Link
Li, Y. & Mifune, N. (2023) “Punishment in the public goods game is evaluated negatively irrespective of non-cooperators’ motivation”. Frontiers in Psychology 14: 1198797. Link
With “Preferences: Neither Behavioural nor Mental” I have tried to contribute to the revived debate on the foundations of choice theory. Here are some related papers:
Clarke, C. (2020) “Functionalism and the role of psychology in economics”. Journal of Economic Methodology, 27: 292-310.
Fumagalli, R. (2020) “How thin rational choice theory explains choices”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 83: 63-74.
Thoma, J. (2021) “In defence of revealed preference theory”. Economics & Philosophy, 37: 163-187.
Beck, L., & Grayot, J. D. (2021) “New functionalism and the social and behavioral sciences”. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 11(4), 103.
Grüne-Yanoff, T. (2022) “What preferences for behavioral welfare economics?” Journal of Economic Methodology, 29: 153-165.
Beck, L. (2022) “Why We Need to Talk About Preferences: Economic Experiments and the Where-Question”. Erkenntnis, online first.
Hausman, D. M. (2023) “Subjective total comparative evaluations”. Economics & Philosophy, online first.
Vredenburgh, Kate. (2023). Causal Explanation and Revealed Preferences. Philosophy of Science, online first. Link
In an old experiment we tried to observe the emergence of social norms from repeated play of coordination games (social conventions). Interesting follow-up work includes
Przepiorka, W., Szekely, A., Andrighetto, G., Diekmann, A., & Tummolini, L. (2022). “How norms emerge from conventions (and change)”, Socius 8, 23780231221124556. Link
Chennells, M., Woźniak, M., Butterfill, S., & Michael, J. (2022). “Coordinated decision-making boosts altruistic motivation—but not trust”, Plos One 17, e0272453. Link
My attempt to revive the problem of external validity, in The Methodology of Experimental Economics, has generated some perplexity:
Jones, Martin (2008) “On the autonomy of experiments in economics.” Journal of Economic Methodology 15: 391-407. Link
Jimenez-Buedo, Maria, and Luis Miller (2010) “Why a trade-off? The relationship between the external and internal validity of experiments.” Theoria 25: 301-321. Link
Steel, Daniel (2010) “A new approach to argument by analogy: extrapolation and chain graphs.” Philosophy of Science 77: 1058-1069. Link
Jiménez-Buedo, Maria (2011) “Conceptual tools for assessing experiments: some well-entrenched confusions regarding the internal/external validity distinction.” Journal of Economic Methodology 18: 271-282. Link
Heukelom, Floris (2011) “How validity travelled to economic experimenting.” Journal of Economic Methodology 18: 13-28. Link
Jones, Martin (2011) “External validity and libraries of phenomena: a critique of Guala’s methodology of experimental economics.” Economics and Philosophy 27: 247-271 (my reply is here).
Jackson, Cecile (2012) “Internal and external validity in experimental games: a social reality check.” The European Journal of Development Research, 24(1), 71-88. Link
Gadenne, Volker (2013) “External validity and the new inductivism in experimental economics.” Rationality, Markets and Morals 4, no. 63 . Link
Marcellesi, Alexandre (2015) “External validity: is there still a problem?” Philosophy of Science 82: 1308-1317. Link
Reiss, Julian (2019) “Against external validity.” Synthese 196: 3103-3121. Link
van Eersel, Gerdien, Koppenol-Gonzalez, Gabriela V. and Reiss, Julian (2019) “Extrapolation of experimental results through analogical reasoning from latent classes.” Philosophy of Science 86: 219-235. Link
Khosrowi, Donal (2021) “When Experiments Need Models”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, online first. Link
See also these book reviews:
by Anna Alexandrova, Dan Hausman, Shaun Hargreaves-Heap, and Frank Hindriks, in Journal of Economic Methodology 15 (2008), 197-231 (this review symposium is followed by my reply).
by Don Ross, in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (2008), pp. 247-252. Link
by Shepley Orr, in Economics and Philosophy 23 (2007), pp. 401-407. Link
by Joachim Weimann, in Journal of Economic Literature 44 (2006), pp. 726-728. Link
by Ivan Moscati, in History of Economic Ideas, 14 (2006), pp. 123-130. Link
by Fabian Muniesa, European Economic Sociology Newsletter, 7 (2), February 2006.
by David Teira, in Theoria, 21 (2006), pp. 342-343 (in Spanish). Link
by Flavio Felice, in Review of Metaphysics, 59 (2006), pp. 888-889.
“Models, Simulations, and Experiments” defends the idea that experiments can be demarcated from simulations on the basis of their “materiality”. The “materiality thesis” has sparked a debate that is still going on. For example:
Parker, Wendy (2009) “Does matter really matter? Computer simulations, experiments, and materiality.” Synthese 169: 483-496. Link
Winsberg, Eric (2009) “A tale of two methods.” Synthese 169: 575-592. Link
Parke, Emily (2014) “Experiments, simulations, and epistemic privilege.” Philosophy of Science 81: 516-536. Link
Roush, Sherrilyn (2018) “The epistemic superiority of experiment to simulation.” Synthese 195: 4883-4906. Link
“Building Economic Machines” is an early contribution to the literature on “economic performativity”. My account of the design of the FCC auctions has been criticised by Edward Nik-Khah in various papers:
Nik-Khah, Edward (2006) “What the FCC Auctions can tell us about the performativity thesis.” Economic Sociology–European Electronic Newsletter 7: 15-21. Link
Mirowski, Philip, and Edward Nik-Khah (2007) “Performativity, and a problem in Science Studies, augmented with consideration of the FCC Auctions.” in D. MacKenzie, F. Muniesa and L. Siu (eds.) Do economists make markets? Princeton University Press, pp. 190-225.
Nik-Khah, Edward (2008) “A tale of two auctions.” Journal of Institutional Economics 4: 73-97. Link
Here is my reply: “Getting the FCC auctions straight“.