Clearly, strategy and economics differ along one critical dimension: strategy is concerned descriptively with firms and normatively with the tasks of managers, whereas economics is concerned descriptively with the entire economic system and normatively with the efficiency of that system....

No Abstract

T0 the practical mind, particularly one trained in economics, it might sound a trifle paradoxical to suggest that the truly important issues in a public policy debate have nothing to do with the relative efficacy of the policy options. Paradoxical or not, this is very often the case. And there...

In this comprehensive original reference work, the editors have brought together an unrivalled group of distinguished scholars and practitioners to comment on the historical and contemporary role of industrial districts (IDs).

As the United States continues its slow recovery from the global financial crisis of 2008, politicians, policymakers and academics are increasingly turning to the lessons of history to gain insight into how we might address both current and future economic challenges. This volume offers...

Recent revisionist accounts of corporate governance in both business history and finance are challenging the tradition narrative, associated with Berle and Means (1932) and Chandler (1977), in which the American model of diffuse ownership and coherent diversification is both an inevitable...

This essay examines the historiography of two episodes in history – the scattering of plots in the open fields in the Middle Ages and the transition to the factory system in the Industrial Revolution – to shed light on the uses of institutional economics in economic history. In both of these...

This review essay discusses and appraises Douglas Allen’s The Institutional Revolution (2011) as a way of reflecting on the uses of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) in economic history. It praises and defends Allen’s method of asking “what economic problem were these institutions...

While characteristically ‘Austrian' themes such as entrepreneurship, economic calculation, tacit knowledge and the temporal structure of capital are clearly relevant to the business firm, Austrian economists have said relatively little about management, organization, and strategy. This...