This book brings together a number of articles, for the most part already pub lished, that develop a contemporary institutionalist approach to the study of the economic role of government. The institutionalist tradition in these matters began with the work of Henry Carter Adams on economics and jurisprudence and Richard T. Ely on the relation of the institutions of property and contract 2 to the distribution of wealth. It continued with John R. Commons's monu 3 mental analytical and historical study of the legal foundations of capitalism, Edwin E. Witte's work on the role of government in...