This paper formulates a model embedding the key ideas from Ronald Coase’s famous essay on the theory of the firm in a simple competitive equilibrium setting with anarbitrary number of firms. The model studies the structure of production when transaction costs and diminishing returns to...

This paper discusses the prevalence of Silicon Valley-style localizations of individual manufacturing industries in the United States. Several models in which firms choose locations by throwing darts at a map are used to test whether the degree of localization is greater than would be expected...

This Paper (a) provides a framework for quantifying any economy’s flexibility, and (b) reviews the evidence on New Zealand firms’ birth, growth and death. The data indicate that, by and large, the labour market and the financial market are doing their job.

Leasing, rather than buying, is ingreasingly becoming an attractive option for both consumers and businesses. This article looks at the industries that rent or lease: automobiles and trucks; and machinery and equipment. In some instances, the focus turns to the sub-industries comprising these...

We examine takeover strategies for a multiproduct firm operating in a horizontally differentiated market. We show why a strategic scheme for taking over competitors should obey a maximal market share connection principle. When trying to reinforce its market power, a multiproduct firm should try...

The paper analyses the small- and medium-sized enterprise sector in Poland, seeking to answer the question of whether SME development along current lines is sufficient to assure the sustainable development of the Polish economy.

This paper discusses mixed systems in which SMEs functioned successfully in the presence of extensive state ownership of large enterprises and even classical central planning. Past and present examples are considered in which a small enterprise system worked around , with, and in the interstices...

Price markups over marginal cost are often higher on "aftermarket" parts, service, and supplies for durable goods that they are on the goods themselves. One explanation for this phonomenons is that the aftermarket good is used as a "metering" device to price discriminate among consumer, a model...

We propose a simple model of a partially integrated industry which explicitely takes into account persistant production cost differences across upstream firms, such as one might observe in natural resource industries. The model allows us to highlight the respective roles of strategic...