This paper develops a property rights perspective on the nature of the firm. The basic idea is that learning by doing in production and coordination stem from experience in production and that user rights over productive assets are necessary in order to accumulate the experience needed to...

This paper addresses a puzzle related to firm size and competition. Since Stephen Hymer´s pioneering contribution (Hymer, 1960/1976), theories of the firm implicitly assume that only large, diversified multinational enterprises can compete in industries that combine high capital intensity, high...

Among some scholars of management, organisation and also economists as well as policy makers it is argued that certain new forms of firm organisation such as flexible and learning organisations increasingly are becoming “best practice”, in an increasingly learning and global economy. On a...

The paper develops theory to propose how considering digital information good characteristics modify and extends existing explanations with regard to entry mode choices (in single markets) and internationalization paths (across countries). Explanations offered relate to network and lock-in...

In this note we study a very simple trial & error learning process in the context of a Cournot oligopoly. Without any knowledge of the payoff functions players increase, respectively decrease, their quantity by one unit as long as this leads to higher profits. We show that this process converges...

Exploiting small uncertainties on the part of opponents, players in long, finitely repeated games can maintain false reputations that lead to a large variety of equilibrium outcomes. Even cooperation in a finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma is obtainable. Can such false reputations be...

Reinforcement learning has proved quite successful in predicting subjects' adjustment behaviour in repeatedly played simple games. However, reinforcement learning does not predict convergence to the efficient cell in the minimal information game of mutual fate control, while earlier...

Earlier experiments have shown that under little information subjects are hardly able to coordinate even though there are no conflicting interests and subjects are organised in fixed pairs. This is so, even though a simple adjustment process would lead the subjects into the efficient, fair and...

We ask whether communication can directly substitute for memory in dynastic repeated games in which short lived individuals care about the utility of their offspring who replace them in an infinitely repeated game. Each individual is unable to observe what happens before his entry in the game....

We use an experiment to explore how subjects learn to play against computers which are programmed to follow one of a number of standard learning algorithms. The learning theories are (unbeknown to subjects) a best response process, fictitious play, imitation, reinforcement learning, and a trial...