The contributors to this volume explore many questions about the way institutions emerge and operate. How do grassroots mores and practices evolve to an institutional level? How do institutional norms then regulate economic activity, and what are the advantages of formal versus informal constraints? What are the sources of trust and cooperation in trading markets? What role do cultural networks play in the economic survival of immigrant communities?

And how do conflict and bargaining affect the evolution of community norms?

The New Institutionalism in Sociology also discusses how economic fluctuations arise from interactions between local agents and the institutional environment. Among the topics addressed are the influence of labor activism on the distribution on income, the association between highly competitive "winner-take-all" job markets and increased wage inequality in the United States, and the effect of property right conventions on technical innovation and productivity in pre-industrial England.

A final section explores how deeply embedded cultural traditions have colored the transition from state socialism to market economies in Eastern Europe.