Realism, Underlabouring and Institutions: Review Article

Despite recent advances, economic methodology has found it difficult to transcend certain positivist premises and concerns. The authors argue that developments in philosophy and social theory under the heading of critical realism are particularly significant with respect to overcoming these problems. To illustrate, they focus upon various themes that arise in a recent collection concerned with economic methodology and institutionalist economics, relating these themes to relevant aspects of this realist position. In so doing, the authors argue that an economic methodology restricted to description and an institutionalism committed to some form of methodological individualism are not only unnecessary but problematic. (c) 1996 Academic Press Limited Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.