Purpose: This paper will discuss two problems that have plagued the literature on the Ward-Domar-Vanek labor-managed firm (LMF) model, the perverse supply response problem and the horizon problem. The paper also discusses the solution to the horizon problem and the alleged “solution” of a...

A theory of property needs to give an account of the whole life-cycle of a property right: how it is initiated, transferred, and terminated. Economics has focused on the transfers in the market and has almost completely neglected the question of the initiation and termination of property in...

This paper collects together quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.

A decade has passed since the privatization debates concerning Russia and the other transition economies. This note reviews literature on two issues: the overall institutional change strategy, and the alternatives to and arguments against voucher privatization. The alternative is a strategy of...

Aid and conditionalities are the "carrots and sticks" of the conventional, direct approach to fostering economic development. The economic theory of agency is the most sophisticated treatment of the direct carrots-and-sticks approach to influencing human behavior. Considering the outcomes of the...

Many development strategies assume (or desperately hope) that a country already has the capacity to plan and implement institutional reform or that such institutional reform can be pushed through with the external pressures of aid and conditionalities. In a decentralized reform strategy,...

The market system consists of a price mechanism, built on the foundation of a system of property, and contract. In many developing, and transition economies, the market system functions poorly. In many cases, if not most, the malfunctioning is not simply in the price system (for example,...