Common Law Definition of Employment:What is the difference between an employee and an independent contractor? Both do work for pay; I do a job, and you pay me for it. It's not complicated — until government gets involved. Formal employees require paperwork, legal and regulatory compliance, and...

While price-fixing on platforms can attract severe enforcement action, as shown by the Amazon poster case, a more nuanced picture emerges regarding the fixing of prices for sellers by sharing economy platforms. This paper explores possible antitrust responses to such centralised platform-driven...

Using a dataset of both public and private firm connections, I find a 1.5-percentage-point increase in long-term book leverage of a firm leads to a 10-percentage-point increase in the probability it adds an additional supplier. At the same time, I do not find significant increases in sales or...

We study the holdup problem in repeated transactions between a seller and a buyer such that the seller makes relation-specific investments in each period. We show that where, under spot transaction, formal contracts have no value because of the cooperative nature of investment, writing a simple...

Western multinational corporations (MNCs) increasingly locate advanced functions, including product development and engineering, in emerging economies to gain access to lower-cost science and engineering (S&E) talent and specialized service providers. Over time, new S&E clusters have developed...

Can formal contracts help resolving the holdup problem? We address this important question by studying the holdup problem in repeated transactions between a seller and a buyer in which the seller can make relation-specific investments in each period. In contrast to previous findings, we...

This paper attempts to formalize the transaction cost theory of the firm. Building on the formal approach of Grossman and Hart (1986), a model is developed to capture the essential elements of the transaction cost theory, particularly those that are distinct from the formal property rights...

The latest Forbes 2000 Rankings leave no doubt: Large corporations continue to exist (and they grow even larger), but fewer than ever originate in the U.S. Among the Top 10 listed firms four are Chinese. This article argues that firms from China and India will soon dominate the global...