Purpose: In this paper, I explore the determinants, transactional alignment and performance outcomes of franchise contract length using transaction costs and resource-based theories. Design/methodology/approach: I hypothesize that franchisors choose contract length according to transaction cost...

This paper reviews Austrian approaches to the firm and drafts a theory that emphasizes the firm as a market phenomenon. Here the firm is a vehicle for imaginative entrepreneurs to create artificially high factor density, thereby increasing its internal “extent of the market” to support...

This is a revised edition of Walker (2017). New sections or subsections have been added on the X-inefficiency model, the division of labour and the firm - both pre and post-1970, ownership of the firm and the human capital based firm. Additions have been made to sections on entrepreneurship, the...