Institutional Analysis and Praxis: The Social Fabric Matrix Approach

The Social Fabric Matrix Approach (SFM-A) is a rigorous and holistic methodology for undertaking policy-relevant, complex systems research. This book contains both extensive applications of the SFM-A to contemporary issues and chapters that embed applied research in relevant theoretical, philosophical, and methodological frameworks. It offers a balance of applications through case studies across regions and topics that span areas of finance, development, education, and environment, to name a few. This book creates new ways of using the SFM and forges previously unexplored connections between institutional economics and other areas of study such as financial markets, micro credit, political economy and sustainable development, thus contextually refining the SFM-A. This book complements F. Gregory Hayden’s Policymaking for a Good Society: The Social Fabric Matrix Approach to Policy Analysis and Program Evaluation.

"Institutional Analysis and Praxis: The Social Fabric Matrix Approach… is interesting and thought-provoking. The book should fill or create a good size niche in modeling the effects of economic and social institutions on development, in part because it includes values directly in the model." – Glen Atkinson, University of Nevada, Reno

"The book is concerned with a demonstration of the methodological and analytical importance of the Social Fabric Matrix (SFM) and its application to a wide variety of real-world policy problems. As such, it is the first book of its kind, drawing on the contributions of economic scholars who are doing pioneering work in the application of the SFM to economic policy problems. It is, in short, a ground-breaking enterprise." – Paul Bush, CSU Fresno

" [This book] offers a fresh perspective, as this is the first contribution that would underscore Hayden’s contribution… The editors have assembled one of the finest collections of contemporary Institutionalist thinkers that appears to have been assembled." – John Hall, Portland State University