Policy Relevance of New Institutional Economics?
——Assessing Efficiency, Legitimacy and Effectiveness
关于NIE与政策关系的一篇paper，可以借鉴一下。

Neoclassical  economic  theory  played  a  central  role  in  the  public  policy  shift  from  the  monopoly  paradigm
with strong government intervention to the liberalization of utility sectors in the early 1980s (Groenewegen
2005; Geradin 2006; Guthrie 2006). 2  Yet the removal of governmental interferences and the devolvement of
public  sector  activities  to  private  contractors  has  not  produced  consistently  successful  results  (Williamson
2000; von Weizsacker, Young et al. 2005; Schouten and Pieter van Dijk 2007). Institutional economists argue
that this lack of achievement is in part due to the reliance on neoclassical economic theory, which focused on
economic coordination via the price mechanism and production efficiency while ignoring considerations such
as rules, behaviors and social norms (Coase 2000; North 2000; Joskow 2008). 3  Their argument suggests that
since  lessons  learned  from  new  institutional  economics  (NIE)  can  provide  valuable  insights  into  public
policy-making  (specifically  the  process  of  restructuring),  NIE  should  therefore  have  more  clout  in  public
policy-making (Joskow 2008). NIE is indeed gaining widespread attention in social science literature as it is
becoming  a  more  mainstream  subject  (Joskow  2008).  Particularly  with  respect  to  liberalization  of  utility
sectors, NIE is increasingly used to analyze modes of economic coordination (Rothenberger and Truffer 2003;
Finger, Groenewegen et al. 2005).