This paper argues that economists have been schizophrenic regarding the theory of the firm in a competitive industry. In much (but not all) of their formal mathematical modeling, maximization and equilibrium are taken literally. Ordinarily, however, both maximization and equilibrium are...

Stochastic theories of the firm size distribution explain observed size differences among firms as the consequence of random growth rate differences, accumulated over time. Little attention has thus far been paid, however, to economic interpretation of the abstract stochastic processes involved....

The issues that concern us are how wage and price-setting procedures vary with the nature of the good or service being exchanged and what the implications of different procedures for understanding the mechanics of inflation are. We argue that parties to nonstandardized (idiosyncratic) exchange...

The orthodox attitude among economists toward regulation is one of "disdain and contempt." The general reputation is undeserved, but it fails to discriminate among different economic activities and different types of regulation. An effort to distinguish between those circumstances in which...

Book review

This note takes issue with the "reconciliation" proposed by George Wilson between the Steiner and Williamson formulations of the peak-load pricing problem. Wilson respecifies weights without simultaneously addressing himself to the question of expressing output units in consonant terms. This...

This paper is concerned with jobs for which nontrivial job-specific skills and task-specific knowledge evolve, in a learning by doing fashion, during the course of a worker's employment. Otherwise qualified but inexperienced workers cannot be regarded as the equivalent of job incumbents under...