Research Catalog

Trust, ethnicity, and identity : beyond the new institutional economics of ethnic trading networks, contract law, and gift-exchange

Title
Trust, ethnicity, and identity : beyond the new institutional economics of ethnic trading networks, contract law, and gift-exchange / Janet Tai Landa.
Author
Landa, Janet T.
Publication
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, ©1994.

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library GN448 .L35 1994Off-site

Details

Description
xvi, 225 p.; 24 cm.
Summary
"Trust, Ethnicity, and Identity deals with the economic role of laws and institutions in achieving social order in a decentralized economy. Specifically, this book considers the coordinating role of three major nonprice institutions - ethnic trading networks, contract law, and gift-exchange - in economizing on transaction costs and thus facilitating the process of exchange in decentralized economies in different historical contexts."--BOOK JACKET. "The major unifying theme of the book is this: identity matters when traders operate in an environment characterized by contract uncertainty, where the legal framework for the enforcement of contracts is not well developed. This in turn points out the importance of trust embedded in particularistic exchange relations such as kinship or ethnicity."--BOOK JACKET. "One unique facet of this book is that the author uses a property rights-public choice approach - part of the New Institutional Economics - to provide a unifying theoretical framework to explain such diverse exchange institutions as contract law, ethnic trading networks, and gift-exchange. In addition, it goes beyond the New Institutional Economics paradigm by incorporating some crucial concepts from sociology, anthropology, and bioeconomics, such as social structure, social norms, culture, reciprocity, and kin-related altruism. This broad interdisciplinary framework gives Landa's work a relevance beyond economics to law, political science, sociology, anthropology, and bioeconomics."--Jacket.
Series Statement
Economics, cognition, and society
Uniform Title
Economics, cognition, and society
Subject
  • Economic anthropology
  • Exchange
  • Contracts
  • Customary law
  • Ethnicity > Economic aspects
  • Ceremonial exchange
  • contracts
  • Ceremonial exchange
  • Contracts
  • Customary law
  • Economic anthropology
  • Ethnicity > Economic aspects
  • Exchange
  • Ökonomische Anthropologie
  • Ruilhandel
  • Overeenkomsten
  • Gewoonterecht
  • Vierte Welt
  • Kapitalistische Staaten
  • Entwicklungsländer
Genre/Form
  • contracts.
  • Contracts
  • Contracts.
  • Contrats.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents
Exchange and the problem of order in the social sciences: an introduction to this book -- An exchange economy with legally binding contract -- Specialization, exchange externalities, and contract law: a graph-theoretic approach -- Hadley v. Baxendale and the expansion of the middleman economy -- A theory of the ethnically homogeneous middleman group: an institutional alternative to contract law -- The economics of symbols, clan names, and religion / Jack L. Carr and Janet T. Landa -- The enigma of the Kula Ring: gift-exchanges and primitive law and order -- Socioeconomic organization of honeybee colonies / Janet T. Landa and Anthony Wallis -- Toward a theory of the emergence, evolution, and functions of exchange institutions in achieving ordered anarchy.
ISBN
  • 047210361X
  • 9780472103614
LCCN
94001727
OCLC
  • ocm29795087
  • 29795087
  • SCSB-2044010
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library