Economists or lawyers? Who is better at designing institutions?

Abstract What can economists and lawyers contribute to the stock of useful knowledge for designing institutions? How do their contributions differ? I argue that law and economics generate two complementary but distinct types of knowledge. At its core, legal knowledge is participatory and internal to law’s practice, while economic knowledge is observational and external. Drawing on Michael Polanyi’s concept of ‘intellectual orders’, I propose that economics as a social science and law as a primarily practical profession each rely on complex institutions to generate their respective types of knowledge. The comparative analysis clarifies the potential and limits of using economics for institutional design, the role of law as a knowledge-generating profession, and principles for intellectual collaboration.