Clarence Ayres (May 6, 1891 - July 24, 1972) was the principal thinker of what some has called the Texas school of institutional economics.
It can be argued that Ayres was not an "institutionalist" in any normal sense of the term; since he identified institutions with sentiments and superstition and in consequence institutions only played a kind of residual role in this theory of development which core center was that of technology.