This paper supports the view expressed by other authors that Ronald Coase’s ideas are often misrepresented in the academic world. It restates some of Coase’s main findings with special emphasis on their relevance to processes taking place in Eastern Europe. The goal of this paper is to...

Our paper studies the causes of poverty from the perspective of job search. We show that poor people remain poor because they have less time and initial endowment to search for a better job. Initial endowment is key to successful job search, as one can afford not to work and search longer for a...

Before and after Coase - The Role of Transaction Costs

The modern firm is discussed from the viewpoint of R. Cose’s theory of transaction costs. The issue of management and price mechanism as alternative methods of allocating economic resources is analyzed. The company growth limits are defined and the nature of transaction costs is given,...

Rental rate gives the opportunity cost of a machine, that is, it accounts for the opportunities forgone by using the machine or self-renting it instead of renting it out to someone else. While the traditional approach studies how the rate at which a machine can be rented depends on the market...

The paper explores the quality problem as a major challenge before transitional economies. It uses Akerlof’s model of misrepresented quality in an attempt to study it as the reason for market failure in the new democracies. The determinants of poor quality in the region of Eastern Europe are...

We present a simple method of solving first-order linear differential and difference equations with a constant term and a constant coefficient. When solving such equations standard books in mathematical economics resort to a particular integral and a complementary function without further...

We argue that at the level of the national economy, an import quota transforms national welfare in the form of government revenues and consumer surplus into producer surplus to the domestic monopolist protected by the quota. An import quota confers substantial market power to the local...

The state plays a role in reducing the transaction costs of an economic system. While the scholarly focus seems to be on the indirect role of the state through the legal system and the definition and enforcement of property rights, economists seem to overlook the direct role the state has to...