P14 - Capitalist Systems: Property RightsReturn

The paper works with assumptions, that the conclusions of mainstream approaches to the growth theory are problematical; there are alternative social-economic approaches to the theory of economic growth that offer more plausible explanations of the fundamental economic questions than the traditional views; both social-economic lines of thought and social-economic approaches to the growth theory are not systematized. Considering of these matters, the main aim of this paper is to propose original classification of contemporary social-economic approaches to the growth theory and consecutively to characterize these classified approaches. Two partial streams within the social-economic approaches to the growth theory based on formal conception of institutions (the approach primarily emphasizing the importance of political institutions, the approach primarily emphasizing the importance of economic institutions) have many common features (subjects, methodology, conclusions, exponents) and they together make prevailing stream of the contemporary social-economic growth theory. The growth theory of the new institutional economics based on the North's path dependency concept is still less profiled. This approach really accepts the conception of institutions of Douglas North.

The aim of the paper is to set the agency problem into a broad context of New Institutional Economics with an emphasis on historical connections. In the first section, I explain the historical evolution of basic theoretical concepts like the theory of firm, the theory of market process and the theory of property rights. The second section is dedicated to the explanation of the general concept of agency problem extended with the problem of asymmetric information leading to adverse selection and the problem of moral hazard, in context of previous historical connections. In the last section, the author provides some suggestions for the further theoretical and empirical research.