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Post-Northian institutional economics: a research agenda for cognitive institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2022

Daniil Frolov Open the ORCID record for Daniil Frolov [Opens in a new window]
Daniil Frolov*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Economics and Management, Volgograd State Technical University, Volgograd, Russia
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper discusses a research agenda for post-Northian institutional economics, which focuses on economic cognitive institutions and minds–institutions interactions. Douglass North introduced the ‘shared mental models’ and ‘shared beliefs’ concepts, which were considered the cutting edge of cognitive science at that time, the so-called first wave of extended mind theory. Subsequently, two more waves arose, but they went unnoticed by institutional economists who mostly continue to use internalist and reductionist approaches to cognition. Post-Northian institutional economics offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between cognition and institutions in the spirit of third-wave extended mind theory. The research agenda emphasizes a focus on socially extended cognition and the conception of cognitive institutions as shared mental processes (Petracca and Gallagher, 2020). I propose an alternative definition of cognitive institutions as interactively and polycentrically co-produced cognitive norms; this approach highlights normativity, co-production, and distributed active agency in extended cognitive processes. I propose two domains in which this third-wave framework can be used: ecological rationality and cognitive–cultural niche construction. This paper encourages a discussion on the prospects of a third-wave enactivist turn in institutional economics.

Keywords

Cognitioncognitive institutionsco-productionecological rationalityextended mind theoryheuristicsinstitutional changeshared mental models
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 175 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Millennium Economics Ltd.

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