Economics and Institutions: A Manifesto for a Modern Institutional Economics by Geoffrey M. Hodgson (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988), pp. xviii + 365, 10.95, ISBN 0-7456-0277-0

Geoffrey Hodgson is a Reader in the Department of Economics and Government at Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic.

Actually, Milton Friedman in his famous essay, also refers to Gödel's theorem but casually dismisses it in a footnote. See M. Friedman, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’, Essays in Positive Economics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1953, p. 4n.

See K. J. Arrow, The Limits of Organization, Norton, New York, Ch. 1.

In contrast to Hodgson's view (p. 179), however, this question was addressed by Coase in his famous paper when he asked “Why is not all production carried on by one big firm?” (R. Coase, ‘The Nature of the Firm’, reprinted in The Firm, the Market, and the Law, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988, p. 43).

It must be noted that issues in other disciplines are far from being resolved. As such. Hodgson does face a problem of potential criticism regarding the selection of his allies to promote his own arguments. For instance, the views of John Searle in the artificial intelligence debate are endorsed (p. 115) without acknowledgement of the alternative views of Herbert Simon or even Douglas Hofstadter, “Waking Up From the Boolean Dream, or, Subcognition as Computation”, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1985, pp. 631–665.