By the time a young Ronald Coase was composing “The Nature of the Firm” (1937), litigation had already started wending its way through American courts that took up questions that really anticipated Grossman, Hart and Moore on control rights and Simon and Williamson on adaptation, vertical...

Since at least the 1930s, economists have puzzled over how to delineate the boundaries of a firm. With the advent of antitrust legislation in 1890, American courts have been pressed to consider what constitutes conspiracies between corporate entities to restrain commerce. By the 1980s, courts...