Ambiguous company:

Abstract

Institutional economics turns on some important theoretical dichotomies, in particular those between markets and firms and between institutions and organizations. This paper encourages both economists and historians to consider the middle ground between these extremes. Drawing on a study of the port wine trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it notes that both the firms and even the dominant Portuguese institution of the period were remarkably hybrid in character. It suggests that these hybrid structures may reflect the articulation of institutional regimes that wine firms and regulators had to deal with as they followed the trail from production in Portugal, a mercantilist economy at the time, to consumption in Britain, a proto-free market. It argues in conclusion that implicit theoretical assumptions and foundational empirical work in new institutional economics may have made this sort of articulation difficult to see.