Research on industry life cycles suggests that competitive pressures are more severe during the shakeout stage, which could be associated with the emergence of a dominant design, than at other stages. Transaction-cost theory, on the other hand, assumes generally competitive markets and does not...

This comprehensive and groundbreaking Handbook integrates economic and organization theories to help elucidate the design and evolution of economic organization. Economic organization is regarded both as a subject of inquiry and as an emerging disciplinary field in its own right, integrating...

Since its emergence in the 1970s, transaction cost economics (TCE) has become a leading approach in the research on contracts, firm organization and strategy, antitrust, marketing, inter-firm collaboration and entrepreneurship. With contributions by leading scholars in economics, law and...

We study the determinants of make-or-buy decisions for engines made by every recorded U.S. auto firm during 1917-1933. Most make-or-buy studies testing predictions of transaction cost economics exclude smaller firms, even though their make-or-buy behavior might be different from large firms' due...