This book addresses what the author claims, with considerable justification, to be the foremost challenge confronting the social and behavioral sciences today: the problem of historical specificity. Hodgson poses the question by asking whether we need different theories to understand social and economic behavior in different societies at different stages of their development. He answers the question in the affirmative, and criticizes the economics profession for suggesting that there is one universal model or theory equally suited to all economies and societies at all times. He faults the profession further for no longer worrying much or conducting serious debate about this issue, a development he attributes to the eclipse and eventual demise of institutionalism and historical economics in England, Germany, and the United States
