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List of contents
Acknowledgements. Introduction: Critical institutionalism, market model failure and the business control of society through cybernetic manipulation. 1. Veblen’s dark places of business enterprise and the theory of social costs. 2. Karl William Kapp’s critical theory of social costs: Asset-specific cost-shifting, retardation of efficiency and the paradox of social control. 3. Neoclassical economics beyond externalities?: Akerlof and Shiller’s Phishing for Phools and the theory of social costs. 4. Digging into the dark places of business enterprise: Revisiting the theory of social costs in the light of Mirowski’s institutional economics of knowledge. 5. The darkest place of business enterprise: Business surveillance, the financial crisis and the swansong of the market in the information age. Index
About the author
Pietro Frigato received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Pisa, Italy. He has published multiple papers on the subject of social costs in international peer-reviewed journals and edited two books on the topic for Routledge.
Francisco J. Santos-Arteaga is Assistant Professor at the Free University of Bolzano, Italy, and researcher in the International Business and Markets Group at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He has published extensively in the areas of decision theory and operations research.
Summary
This book considers Veblen’s preoccupation with the dark places of business enterprise, an integral part of the old institutional economics. Combining contributions made by Kapp and Mirowski, it proposes the systematization of an institutional theory of social costs of business enterprise useful for the analysis of contemporary crises.
Additional text
"The strength of institutional economics is its ability to show how industries profit by shifting costs to society. These social costs of capitalism create the crises of today and should be front and centre in every debate.", Sebastian Berger, University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), UK
