We consider three explanations for public ownership: public interest, regulation, and a transaction cost interpretation. We employ a large dataset containing information on the municipal acquisition of U.S. private water companies between 1897 and 1915. Those data allow us to isolate the effects...

Public policies are the outcomes of complex intertemporal exchanges among politicians. The political institutions of a country constitute the framework within which these transactions are accomplished. We develop a transactions theory to understand the ways in which political institutions affect...

In this study, we examine the strategies adopted by partners in multipartner alliances. Drawing from the literature, we argue that the inherent tensions in strategic alliances are accentuated in multipartner alliances, resulting in higher expected transaction costs. We hypothesize that, to deal...

This article critically examines the goal of minimizing transaction costs, including the costs of legal decision-making. This goal permeates the law and economics literature and has profoundly influenced public policy. While most transaction cost scholarship has focused upon private law, this...

Patent law is under-theorized in the sense that the predominating incentive-based justifications cannot by themselves adequately explain empirical evidence on patenting gathered by research economists. This article provides an alternative justification for patent law based on private transaction...