The Theory of Human Nature

Abstract

This chapter focuses on three simple postulata: all socioeconomic theories contain, explicitly or implicitly, a theory of human nature, institutionalism is a socioeconomic theory and institutionalism must, therefore, include a theory of human nature. The majority of those post-Clarence Ayres neoinstitutionalist writers who added to, or employed, the Ayresian theory of human nature may be divided into two broad groups: the “Texas School” and the “Colorado School” of neoinstitutionalists. The appellation “Colorado School” is used as an umbrella term for both traditions. The neoinstitutionalists are united in their criticism and rejection of the orthodox concept of human nature; a concept that is epitomized in the phrase “the economic man.” Ayres’s theory of human nature constitutes the basis for those neoinstitutionalist works on human behavior that have been produced by some of his colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin and by a number of his former students elsewhere.

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