This book provides a practitioner's foundation for the process of explanatory model building, breaking down that process into five stages. Donald W. Katzner presents a concrete example with unquantified variable values to show how the five-stage procedure works. He describes what is involved in...

Contents: Preface -- 1. Introduction to organization in the economic firm -- Part I: The structure of authority -- 2. Rank, level, and control -- 3. Height and thickness -- 4. Supervision -- 5. Time, order, and firm organization -- Part II: Organizational complexity -- 6. Complexity and...

The book provides substantial discussion of the model’s methodological background; returns to scale; the transformation surface and the fixed-factor-supply economy; existence, uniqueness, and stability of equilibria; the dynamics of market adjustments; methodological individualism and the theory...

The Coffey-Tomlinson challenge to my view that the behavior of the Japanese firm is best understood without reference to profit maximization is met by arguing that (1) the outsourcing of production in Japan is, by itself, insufficient to warrant a claim of profit maximization; (2) behavior that...

This paper traces the history of the failed automobile-trade negotiations between Japan and the United States from the 1970’s to the mid 1990’s. It attributes the failure of those negotiations to a lack of understanding on both sides of not only what was motivating the other side, but also...