Institutional Economics and Feminist Economics Essay

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Differences and Similarities between Institutional Economics and Feminist Economics
Economics is a broad and diverse subject. Numerous scholars have narrowed their knowledge to explain only one discipline on the topic. However, the text, Rethinking Economics: An Introduction to Pluralist Economics provides a wide scope and access to the nine different approaches to economics, including institutional and feminist economics. Thorstein Veblen dedicated his life and career to criticizing capitalism by researching and offering insights to economics and sociology. Using Thorstein Veblen’s Essays in Our Changing Order, The Place of Science in Modern Civilization, Vivienne Brown’s The Economy as Text and Rethinking Economics: An Introduction to Pluralist Economics, this essay seeks to highlight and explain two ways in which institutional and feminist economics are different and similar, as well as their significance in the study of economics.
Epistemological Differences
Institutional economics is an approach driven by an object compared to the others that may be inspired by theory and methods. This research program attempts to understand social institutions and their implications for the economy (Hodgson 47). Therefore, the primary responsibility of institutional economists is to determine the complexities associated with concrete time-space-bound phenomena. What this means is that this framework intends to describe economics in a more general degree in the form of the theoretical paradigms. Then, the results of the approach are evaluated not according to the explanations of the apparent truth, as in the general theories of economics, but line with its practical value for understanding and influencing real-life phenomena via institutional design, regulations, and policy intervention. Furthermore, Fischer et al. also write that this approach mainly engages in relevant scientific practices that try to immerse itself, to a particular capacity, to the topic that it wishes to understand (88). It does this by reconstructing the representations and experiences of subjects involved and participants via archival analysis, interviews, and role play.
Feminist economics answers the primary question as to the findings that should be researched and discussed more in-depth and closely. Since the approach deals with the relationship between gender and economics, it describes the results of whether sex should be considered the central consideration of understanding the economic discipline of a nation. Therefore, Waller relates this notion to the Veblenian dichotomy saying that feminist economics highlights the situation of knowledge on the issue of economics and the idea of power relations in science production (218). One term used in the epistemological representation of the approach is situated knowledge, where the analyst is often rooted in specific contexts of history, culture, and economy. These grounds affect the researcher's preferences, interests, scientific results, and his or her points of view. In consequence, the gender of the analyst is significant as it impacts the nature of their research questions, methodologies, and findings. This notion is evident in the double blindness of economics regarding women, their negative position in economics as an entity, and their minimal to no inclusion in economics as well as their less contribution to the idea.
Epistemology is a description of how we know things and how we think of a particular method of evaluation. In light of the epistemological difference between institutional and feminist economics, the difference is significant as it offers a platform that determines the validity of the two approaches and their distinct degrees in explaining economics. The incompatibility explained in the discourse on the differences above gives the reader a chance to examine whether the facts provided by the two frameworks are either true or false. Moreover, as the differences mainly explain the concepts used and the contexts of the institutional and feminist economics, their differences give a direction to a person who wishes to research the topics or think more closely on the discipline (Veblen & Leon 303). Furthermore, without the epistemological differences, it could be challenging to believe in productivity and the degree to which the two approaches relate the knowledge of economics in real-world situations.
Methodological Differences
There is a massive difference between institutional economics and economics in terms of methodology. Starting with institutional economics, the researchers in this framework are great opposers of the deductive-nomological perspective of learning economics. In her journal published in The American Economist, An Introduction to Institutional Economics: Tools for Understanding Evolving Economies, Mayhew states that this approach uses both qualitative and quantitative methods of research to examine the strategies of other scholars on the topic of economics (6). Moreover, analysts in this program use qualitative interviews, observation, participation, and secondary studies of published materials when collecting data. Equally important, institutionalists utilize econometrics, game-theoretic modeling, and experimental methods as well as institutionalist scholarship. The program aims for the use of mid-range theory, where analysts conduct vast research on the specific qualitative boundaries of economics and the particular practices that are deemed achievable in an institution. This means that institutionalists identify and select a small group of institutions that they render fit and relevant for the situation or topic that they wish to describe, then create and develop their structure (Hodgson 49). This is called concessive holism. Additionally, institutionalists use case studies and administration of questionnaires in their various empirical analyses because of the sense that the two methods offer a great detail of information.
Feminist economics, on th...