some listmania recommended this book as a initial introduction to institutional economics. but it's not good for such purpose. as a balance sheet between old and new institutional economics, it serves its purpose but as a intorduction to IE sui generis, it doesn't at all. for such purpose, it's not focused at all and points are dispersed over various theory and opinions. and to serve its initial purpose, contrasting OIE vs NIE, there is no opinion of the author himself. it often makes readers deviate the line of argument. if u need an introduction to IE, u should find other like Geoffrey M. Hodgson's ' Economics and Institutions'.

A very useful book. Rutherford categorizes the two schools of institutional thought, surveys the thought in each school, addresses the key differences between the two schools of thought on issues such as abstraction vs realism, formalism vs qualitative analysis, etc.

For anyone who doesn't already know, old institutionalism started off as a reaction against the lack of realism and awareness of historical evolutionary processes in Neoclassical economics. It was therefore sharply opposed to Neoclassical thought. New institutional thought is an extension of the neoclassical framework, still operating on the assumptions of (bounded) rationality and utility or profit maximization, to the analysis of institutions. There is therefore a significant tension between old and new institutionalists, with old institutionalists attacking many of the assumptions inherent in the new institutional approach which are still essentially imported from neoclassical economics. Both the old institutionalists and the new institutionalists see the new institutional economics as a progress forward: the old institutionalist just dont believe the new institutionalists have gone far enough. They are probably right!