Handbook of New Institutional Economics (PDF)

From the reviews:

The Handbook of New Institutional Economics edited by Claude Menard and Mary Shirley gives an excellent picture of this emerging field. It also addresses the most interesting questions now at the forefront of economic research. - George Akerlof, University of California at Berkeley; Nobel Laureate

Over the last thirty years, a very important influence on the development of economic analysis has been the emphasis on rights to property, their transferability and their implications for economic behavior, especially in relation to the law. It is very valuable to have the material of the "new institutional economics" brought together in a handbook, and especially so when the authors are themselves the leading researchers in the field. I look forward to using the handbook and to seeing its influence on further research. - Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University; Nobel Laureate

I would like to recommend this book to economists of both East and West who have been focusing on comparing economic systems for the last decades, who have been examining first the reforms implemented in the communist countries and then the post-socialist transition there, and who have always been aware of the particular importance of institutions. Having read the outstanding and comprehensive essays published in this new Handbook, one can clearly see the close intellectual kinship between the approach used by the scholars studying post-socialist transformation and by the research program of "New Institutional Economics. - Janos Kornai, Collegium Budapest