The financial systems in continental Europe are subject to profound changes in the institutions of market exchange. Banks traditionally holding close relationships with firms are substituted by non-bank institutional investors. The present paper examines whether this implies a substitution of...

The financial systems in continental Europe are subject to profound changes in the institutions of market exchange. Banks traditionally holding close relationships with firms are substituted by non-bank institutional investors. The present paper examines whether this implies a substitution of...

Wine brokers are wholesale intermediaries. They belong to the category of the matchmaker intermediaries. These middlemen are not well known. Their role is to help buyers and sellers of bulk wine to meet and transact. Assuming that wine merchants appeal to brokers because they reduce transaction...

Although most of the predicted consequences of the internet-revolution in the 90s did not become reality, the internet has lead to sustainable hanges in the organization of most industries. In particular, this is true for business-to-business (B2B) relations between firm. An obvious `proof' for...

The financial systems in continental Europe are moving from bank intermediation to intermediation by non-bank institutional investors. The present paper examines to what extent this implies a substitution of relationship finance by arm’s length finance or just of one form of relationship...

Arithmetically each level of human generation contributes to 6.72 generations of Computer upgrading. But, this effect could pay back to the human society only by tuning the corporate infrastructure to utilise these computer innovations optimally. The future computer electronics works towards...

Platform sharing across manufacturers has recently become common practice in the automobile industry. Its important objective is to reduce procurement costs by taking advantage of the commonality of components, but this often reduces the degree of product differentiation. We investigate this...

We examine the relationship between the optimal incentive contract and the firm’s decision to fire a manager for poor performance. We first derive some theoretical results using a simple principal-agent model, and then examine the empirical evidence on the incidence of forced turnover among...

External agents are frequently characterized as necessary for efficiency in team production settings. At the same time, these agents must be constrained from opportunistically exercising their enforcement capabilities. I argue that collective action costs and formal institutions (e.g., golden...

This essay brings fiscal federalism theory into contact with the knowledge perspective to economic organization. The question addressed is: can a central government be justified in the context of fiscal federalism on grounds of economic organization? We point out that if one looks at the...