Brian Epstein (Tufts University)
Prevailing economic theories of institutions and organizations treat them as rational solutions to strategic problems of interaction and coordination. In this paper, I argue against this approach to institutions, and in particular against the idea that institutions be understood as social conventions. I use the grounding-anchoring model in social ontology to analyze convention, and argue that that it is misleading to understand conventions in terms of structured attitudes or as strategic coordination devices. I further argue that only the rare instance of social institutions is conventional.
