The paper deals with development of a general theory of the firm. It discusses the demand for such a theory, reviews existing approaches to its generalization, and offers a new variant of general theory of the firm based on the contract theory. The theory is based on minimization of...

Do economists reach a conclusion on household and municipal recycling? I explore the policy judgments of published economists on recycling and find that there is no broad consensus. The mainstream recycling literature is dominated by a guided-market approach; taxes and subsidies are advocated to...

Dieses Paper untersucht "property rights" im Stile der ökonomischen Analyse des Rechts. Dabei wird der Zusammenhang zwischen "property rights" und Allokationseffizienz ebenso behandelt wie der Schutz von "property rights" durch Unterlassungs- und Schadenersatzansprüche, durch Haftungsregeln...

There are more and more industries in which firms are specialized in the production of a component of the final good. This is especially true in high-tech industries. The basic question is why don't these firms merge ? We paradoxically show that industries which are typical candidates for...

Property in financial options (derivatives) is stated and transferred through contracts, while in real options property may arise from assets under the management of the firm, without a formal contract properly defining property. Furthermore, in some situations the asset can be public, and its...

The aim of this arti cle is to show that the New Insti tuti onal Economics is an interdisciplinary stream combining economics, law, organizati on theory, politi cal sciences, sociology, and anthropology. The main theories which are part of the New Insti tuti onal Economics are: Agency Theory,...

Despite the rapidly growing volume and economic importance of data in the digital economy, the legal framework for data ownership, access and trade remains incompletely defined in the EU and elsewhere. De facto data ownership dominates and often leads to fragmentation or anti-commons problems in...

We review the literature on public sector outsourcing to explore if the theoretical predictions from the incomplete contracts literature hold up to recent empirical evidence. Guided by theory, we arrange services according to the type and magnitude of their contractibility problems. The...

The present paper aims to contribute to the literature on the foundations of incomplete contracts by providing conditions under which simple delegation of authority is the solution to the complete-contracting problem of the parties. We consider a hold-up framework where both parties profit from...

This paper adds to the current literature on incomplete contracting that argues that deviating from a complete information, transaction-cost free environment may be may generate valuable insights. We achieve this by assuming bargaining with asymmetric information. We consider the consequences of...