This paper tests an idea from relational contracting theory (Macaulay 1963, North 1990, Greif 1994, Kranton 1996) that informal relationships can substitute for formal contract enforcement through the judicial system, through the analysis of a survey of the surgical instrument cluster in...

The last two decades have been characterized by accelerated technological innovations, fanned by rapid developments in global telecommunication and information networks, and the lowering of trade barriers among nations. These developments have made globalization one of the most dominant forces...

The economic characteristics of software and transaction costs explain, why closed source and open source software co-exist. It is about the efficient use of a non- and anti-scarce resource. But because of ex-post transaction costs that lead to information asymmetries, some property rights...

Using a threshold autoregressive model, we confirm the presence of nonlinearities in sectoral real exchange rate (SRER) dynamics across Mexico, Canada and the US in the pre-NAFTA and post-NAFTA periods. Measuring transaction costs using the estimated threshold bands, we find evidence that Mexico...

In this paper we are concerned with the existence of a dynamic arbitrage gap that evolves out of an adjustment process for disequilibrium prices, within a complex dynamics framework which takes into account the market microstructure and transactions costs. Although this gap exhibits non linear...

This paper is motivated by empirical observations on the comovements of currency velocity, inflation, and the relative size of the credit services sector. We document these comovements and incorporate into a monetary growth model a credit services sector that provides services that help people...

We see that Belgian industrial dairy production before World War II lagged the developments of other countries in the same region and of the same size such as Denmark and The Netherlands. The share of home production remained remarkably high, while within the industrial segment the number of...

Entrepreneurs in a competitive economy face three fundamental problems. They need to search for and discover a business opportunity (Kirzner, 1973), evaluate it (Knight, 1921), and then seize the opportunity to reap entrepreneurial profits (Schumpeter, 1911) (Langlois, 2007). The problem that we...

With airport privatization and infrastructure expansion projects taking place in the liberalized European air transport market, airport and airline companies are critically reevaluating their vertical governance structures. This paper analyzes the comparative efficiency of vertical governance...

This paper discusses the possible legitimating function (understood as the ability to provide an appropriate framework for the development of rational arguments supporting legal principles and rules) of the Coasian "narrative". I argue that the Coasian narrative is inadequate to provide rational...