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The following Economists are recognized as distinguished contributors
to the analytical foundation of the Institutional Economics
Center: James
Buchanan, Douglass North, Gary Becker, Richard
Posner, Mancur Olson, and Friedrich List.
James M. Buchanan: 
James M. Buchanan (1919 - ) is the winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize
in Economics and one of the pioneers of the public choice theory. He
teaches at George Mason University,
and is the leader in the Virginia
school of political economy. Public Choice theory has a normative aspect
(what ought to be) which champions “unanimous consent” and a positive
aspect (what is) which explains and predicts individual’s political
behavior. Buchanan has written extensively and is arguably the most
productive Economist in America
today. He is also, possibly, a believer in Economic Imperialism. His major
publications are put together in The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, most of which are
now freely available online:
Public
Principles of Public Debt: A Defense and Restatement,
The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy,
by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock
Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual
Choice,
The Demand and Supply of Public Goods,
Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in Economic Theory,
The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan,
Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes, by James
M. Buchanan and Richard E. Wagner
The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution,
by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan
The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey
Brennan and James M. Buchanan
(There was an "indirect
dialogue" between James Buchanan and Frank Fang)
Douglass C. North: 
Douglass C. North (1920 - ) is co-recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize
in Economics and the first economic historian ever to win the John R.
Commons Award in 1992. Along with
Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, he helped found the International
Society for the New Institutional Economics in St. Louis in 1997. He got his Ph.D. in
Economics from the University of California, Berkeley
in 1952 and joined the Department of Economics at Washington
University in Saint Louis in 1983. His major
publications include:
Institutional Change and American Economic Growth, Cambridge
University Press, 1971 (with Lance Davis).
The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, 1973 (with
Robert Thomas).
Growth and Welfare in the American Past, Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Structure and Change in Economic History, Norton, 1981.
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, 1990. Empirical
Studies in Institutional Change, Cambridge University Press, 1996
(edited with Lee Alston & Thrainn Eggertsson).
Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Princeton University
Press, 2005.
Gary S. Becker:
Gary S. Becker (1930 - ) is the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize
in Economics for "having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis
to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including non-market
behavior". Becker also received National Medal of Science in 2000. He
is a professor at the University
of Chicago, a member
of the Hoover Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research. In
December 2004, Becker started a joint blog with Judge Posner. His major
publications include:
Social Economics: Market Behavior in a
Social Environment (by Gary S. Becker and Kevin M. Murphy, 2003)
The New Economics of Human Behavior
(by Gary Becker, Mariano Tommasi, and Kathryn Ierulli, 1995)
Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis,
with Special Reference to Education (1994)
The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (1978)
The Economics of Discrimination (1971)
The Economics of Life: From Baseball to Affirmative
Action to Immigration, How Real-World Issues Affect Our Everyday Life
(by Gary S. Becker and Guity Nashat Becker, 1998)
Gary
Becker and Kevin M. Murphy (1988). "A Theory of Rational
Addiction". The Journal of Political Economy 96: 675-700.
Gary Becker and George
J. Stigler (1977). "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum". The
American Economic Review 67: 76-90.
Gary Becker and H. Gregg
Lewis (1973). "On the Interaction between the Quantity and Quality of
Children". The Journal of Political Economy 81: S279-S288.
Gary Becker (1968).
"Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach". The Journal
of Political Economy 76:
169-217.
Richard A. Posner:
Richard A. Posner (1939 - ) is the founder of the "law and
economics" movement and a professor at the University of Chicago Law
School since 1969. He currently also serves as a judge on the United States
Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Posner graduated first in his
class from Harvard
Law School
in 1962. The New York Times called him "one of the most
important antitrust scholars of the past half-century". A 2004 poll by
Legal Affairs magazine named Posner one of the top twenty legal
thinkers in the U.S. Posner's pragmatism, moral relativism and skepticism,
and his affection for the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche set him apart from
most American conservatives. His publications include:
2006. Not a Suicide Pact: The
Constitution in a Time of National Emergency,
2004. Catastrophe: Risk and Response,
2003. Law, Pragmatism and Democracy,
2002. Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline,
2002. Economic Analysis of Law, 6th ed.,
1999. The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory,
1996. Overcoming Law,
1994. Sex and Reason,
1986. The Problems of Jurisprudence.
Mancur Olson:
Mancur Olson, Jr. (1932 - 1998)
was a major contributor to the collective action theory and the new
institutional theory of economic growth. In his 1965 book, The Logic of
Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, he theorized
that “only a separate and ‘selective’ incentive will stimulate a rational
individual in a latent group to act in a group-oriented way”; that is, only
a benefit reserved strictly for group members will motivate one to join and
contribute to the group. In 1982, he expanded his Logic of Collective
Action in an attempt to explain "The Rise and Decline of
Nations". The idea is that small distributional coalitions tend to
form over time. Groups like cotton-farmers, steel-producers, and labor unions
will have the incentives to form political lobbies and influence policies
in their favor. These policies will tend to be protectionist and
anti-technology, and will therefore hurt economic growth; but since the
benefits of these policies are selective incentives concentrated amongst
the few coalitions members, while the costs are diffused throughout the
whole population, the "Logic" dictates that there will be little
public resistance to them. Hence as time goes on, and these distributional coalitions
accumulate in greater and greater numbers, the nation burdened by them will
fall into economic decline.
In his final book, Power and
Prosperity (2000), Olson distinguished between the economic effects of
different types of government, in particular, tyranny, anarchy and
democracy. Olson argued that a "roving bandit" (under anarchy)
has an incentive only to steal and destroy, whilst a "stationary
bandit" (a tyrant) has an incentive to encourage a degree of economic
success, since he will expect to be in power long enough to take a share of
it. The stationary bandit thereby takes on the primordial function of
government -- protection of his citizens and property against roving
bandits. Olson saw in the move from roving bandits to stationary bandits
the seeds of civilization, paving the way for democracy, which improves
incentives for good government by more closely aligning it with the wishes
of the population.
To honor Olson's many
contributions to the fields of Economics and Political Science, the
American Political Science Association introduced the Olson Award to the
best Ph.D. dissertation in Political Economy.
Friedrich List: 
Friedrich List (1789 - 1846) was a German economist who has been known for
the concept of "National System". His book The
National System of Political Economy details his ideas of "productive power" over "exchange
value" and the meaning of "national interest". List's
"national economics" theory differs from the "individual
economics" and "cosmopolitan economics" by Adam Smith and
J.B. Say. List believed that an individual promotes only his own personal
interests but a state fosters the welfare of all its citizens, and that an
individual may prosper from activities which harm the interests of a
nation.
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