Since the 1970s, economists have speculated on the effects of the proliferation of new computer and communications capabilities on business structure and performance. The present analysis explores information technology's (IT)relationship to employment and firm structure by examining how IT...

This comment was filed with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division on December 31, 2009, as "Comments Regarding Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues in Our 21st Century Economy" in response to the DOJ/USDA request for public comments for the agencies' joint workshops on antitrust...

This paper incorporates the interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences) and suggests a holistic framework for analysis of agrarian contracts. First, it specifies type and importance of...

The firm was evicted from economic analysis for a long time. It appeared as a particular and substantial "scope" thanks to the economist R.H. Coase at the end of the 1930'S but sunk into oblivion for three decades. This paper deals with the 1970's renewal of interest in the theory of the firm,...

This Essay considers the problem of understanding intellectual sharing/pooling arrangements and the construction of cultural commons arrangements. We argue that an adaptation of the approach pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to commons arrangements in the natural environment may...

There is much debate and diversity of results in the literature on the relationships between formal governance and trust. Drawing on concepts such as substitution, complementarity and crowding out, scholars have variously argued for (and found evidence consistent with) both positive and negative...

We compare the magnitude of bargaining costs within and between firms. The results are derived from a unique dataset comparing internal and external transactions for the same categories of parts at a single high-technology firm. They confirm that direct bargaining costs are higher with external...

We develop a formal model with transaction costs and economies of labor specialization to address the firm size and the level of social division of labor. We show that the decline of firm size and the increase of the level of social division of labor may concur. We also demonstrate that an...

We develop a formal model with transaction costs and economies of labor specialization to address the firm size and the level of social division of labor. We show that the decline of firm size and the increase of the level of social division of labor may concur. We also demonstrate that an...

Dozens of people worked together to produce Casablanca. But a single person working alone wrote The Sound and the Fury. While almost all films are produced by large collaborations, no great novel ever resulted from the work of a team. Why does the frequency and success of collaborative creative...