Bridging Old and New Institutional Economics: Gustav Schmoller and Douglass C. North, Seen with Oldinstitutionalists' Eyes

In the last years, a dialogue and comparison between old and new institutionalism set in. In some recent writings, R. Richter pointed out the similarity of their questions and critique of neoclassical theory. He tries to show that Schmoller as an old institutionalist shies away from theorizing while e.g. D. C. North does not. We argue that both give reasonable alternative answers to methodological and theoretical problems of every institutional analysis which can be formulated in five dichotomies.