This chapter addresses the history, use and significance of the term transaction costs. Few words in the economic language have been more abused or fought over and this is shown to result from the emergence of two distinct definitions and uses. The ‘Neoclassical’ definition rests on the...

Storable products allow consumers to time their purchases to exploit price fluctuations. It has been documented that during promotions consumers buy more. The additional purchases are potentially intended not only for current use, but to be stockpiled for future consumption. This paper discusses...

On the basis of a modification of K. Lancaster's characteristics approach and a special class of non-homothetic utility functions individual demand functions are derived. Individual demand is determined in a complex way by the income as well as the product qualities and the unit costs of the...

Despite the pervasive phenomenon of scale economies the majority of firms hasalways been small firms. The emergence of small firms as a means of economic development on both sides of the Atlantic has been one of the major new topics of economic policy since the 1980s. This has drawn renewed...

This paper analyses optimal contracts in a principal-agent model where the agent is intrinsically motivated at the outset and there is an endogenous relationship between the structure of incentive payments and intrinsic motivation (crowding effects). The analysis shows that crowding effects have...

We present new identification results for nonparametric models of differentiated products markets, using only market level observables. We specify a nonparametric random utility discrete choice model of demand allowing rich preference heterogeneity, product/market unobservables, and endogenous...

This paper introduces the dynamical framework which combines product and process innovations. The model contributes to the theoretical literature on innovations in two ways. First, it permits for the simultaneous dynamics of both types of innovations which is rarely considered in the literature....

This paper provides a theory of quot;family network,quot; in contrast to quot;local externalities,quot; to explain the geographic concentration of industry. For many industries, one most important source of entrants is spinoffs, who typically locate near parent firms and benefit from knowledge...