Instituted or Embedded? Legal, Fiscal and Economic Institutionalisation of Markets

Recent debates in economic sociology have raised questions about the significance of law in the economy, and specifically the role of law in the operation of markets. This paper compares a recent grand and detailed historical sweeps of the laws of the labour market by Deakin and Wilkinson with an ideally complementing similar two volume study of the history of taxation, also related to the labour market, by Daunton. By exploring the differences between the evolution of legal, fiscal and welfare institutions, this paper aims to cast light on the processes of institutional change that neither, taken separately, were able to undertake.