Non-Contractual Relations in Business Re-examined: A Critical Assessment if Macaulay's Legal Realism
The last two decades have seen a spawning literature on social norms in the anthropology and sociology of law as well as in the economic analysis of law and in institutional economics s la Williamson. Much of this literature refers back to a seminal paper by Stewart Macaulay in which it is claimed that there is ample evidence that business transactions are primarily non-contractual. This essay reviews this claim.