Chapter 11: Can Institutional Economics Still Fascinate Scholars?

When I was a young law student at the University of Turin, more than 25 years ago, I was interested in the idea of understanding the mechanisms that drive individuals to behave according to social norms (both the informal ones such as customs or habits; and the legal ones contained in legal norms, codes, and regulations). I was fascinated by the fact that in many circumstances, the adherence of individuals to norms remained unchanged over time, while in others it was interrupted at some point, leading not only to the emergence of new behaviors, or at least different from those previously established by the norms, and to a change in the norms themselves.