American institutionalists were not theoretical but anti-theoretical.... Without a theory they had nothing to pass on except a mass of descriptive material waiting for a theory, or a fire.
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Ronald H. Coase (1984). "The New Institutional Economics." Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 140 (March): 299-231; p. 230; As cited in: Malcolm Rutherford (1996), Institutions in Economics: The Old and the New Institutionalism. p. 9