This paper brings order to the vast conceptual and empirical literature on measuring transaction costs. It critically reviews the broad and diverse landscape of the field of transaction costs measurement, ranging from financial economics, Williamsonian transaction cost economics, the transaction...

The transaction cost literature continues to mature as improvements have been made on both theoretical and empirical fronts. Over the past several years, serious attempts have been made to actually measure transaction costs. Here I argue that successful measurement must solve three...

This paper presents a simple general equilibrium model of economic performance through time. The model incorporates four main determinants of economic performance: technology, capital investment, the division of labor and quality of institutions. It demonstrates that growth is not automatic even...

While the role of division of labour is very important, in itself its scope for promoting economic growth is limited. This scope is tremendously expanded when division of labour is compounded with that of capital accumulation and technical progress and the interaction/reinforcing effects between...

After outlining what appears to be the central principle unifying the literature of the division of labour that has been expanding during the last two decades, I highlight a set of selected research topics, which appear to me to be of particular significance and therefore deserve much further...

This paper applies Coase's (1937) theory of the firm to study public good provision. It compares three methods of public good provision: (1) collective provision, where users organize themselves to jointly finance the public good which is produced by a specialized firm; (2) market provision...

Extending the Kim (1989) model of endogenous labor specialization to an overlapping generations model with an endogenous technology choice, we show in this paper that, when the market size and the fixed costs associated with the technologies with labor specialization are small, the growth...

No abstract received.

Adam Smith pointed out that specialization makes individuals more productive through improved dexterity, judgment, and innovation. The theory of increasing returns incorporated in this paper does not depend on the presence of such intra-personal enhancement of productivity. Instead, we note that...

No abstract received.