In this paper it is demonstrated that voluntary bargaining over a collective decision under asymmetric information may well lead to ex post efficiency if the default decision is non-trivial. It is argued that the default decision may be interpreted as a 'simple' contract that the parties have...

This study of the Italian wool-based textile industries (woollens, worsteds, and serges) seeks to examine its rise, expansion, and ultimate decline, over a period of five centuries (from ca. 1200 to ca. 1730) in the context of both international competition and economic conjoncture, in the...

The globalization of the economic activity is profoundly changing long established concepts, customs and ways of doing business all around the globe. One of those concepts is the currency. The globalization and the Internet, really two facets of the same phenomenon, people hugely removed in...

This paper studies a non-cooperative bargaining problem with one buyer and many sellers, focussing on the tension between the complementarity intrinsic to such a setup and efficiency. We address this problem in a very general setup with a technology that allows for variable degrees of...

Currently we have to realize a major change in the technological basis of manufacturing or even all production processes: The diffusion of new information and communication technologies, especially Internet Technologies, on the shop floor. Applications of Internet Technologies may be directly...

This paper explores empirically what factors influence a firm’s decision to contribute and to take leadership in open source projects. Increasing firms’ participation in the development of open source software (OSS) is generally perceived as a puzzle. Assuming that firms face a...

In this working paper, T.L. Anderson and F.S. McChesney’s book “Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law” is discussed.

In this paper we discuss "lock in effects" and "hold-up problems" (which occur when relationship-specific investments are sunk).

Pricing costs and information problems are introduced into a framework with consumer-producers, economies of specialization, and transaction costs to predict the endogenous and concurrent evolution in division of labor and in the information of organization acquired by society. The concurrent...

The paper addresses the effect of technological progress on the frontiers of the firm, building on transaction cost theory and agency theory. The model incorporates four types of costs: production, coordination, management, and transaction costs. The market has lower production costs, but higher...