The Economic Nature of the Firm: A Reader

Front Cover
Louis Putterman, Randy Kroszner
Cambridge University Press, Jan 26, 1996 - Business & Economics - 390 pages
This book brings together classic writings on the economic nature and organization of firms, including works by Ronald Coase, Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz, Michael Jensen and William Meckling, and Oliver Williamson, as well as more recent contributions by Paul Milgrom and John Roberts, Bengt Holmstrom, and Oliver Hart. Part I explores the general theme of the firm's economic nature and its place in the market system; Part II covers the scope of the firm; Part III examines internal organization and the human factor; and Part IV ties the firm's organization and behavior to issues of financing and ownership. This second edition has twelve new selections and an introductory essay that surveys the new institutional economics of the firm.
 

Selected pages

Contents

a new introduction
1
Within and among firms the division of labor
33
From The Wealth of Nations
35
From Capital
46
From Risk Uncertainty and Profit
60
The use of knowledge in society
66
Relational exchange economics and complex contracts
72
From The Visible Hand
78
Production information costs and economic organization
193
Contested exchange new microfoundations for the political economy of capitalism
217
Understanding the employment relation the analysis of idiosyncratic exchange
233
Multitask principalagent analyses incentive contracts asset ownership and job design
254
The prisoners dilemma in the invisible hand an analysis of intrafirm productivity
267
Labor contracts as partial gift exchange
276
Profit sharing and productivity
288
Finance and the control of the firm
297

The scope of the firm
87
The nature of the firm
89
Vertical integration appropriable rents and the competitive contracting process
105
The governance of contractual relations
125
The organization of industry
136
The limits of firms incentive and bureaucratic features
146
Bargaining costs influence costs and the organization of economic activity
162
Towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm
175
The employment relation the human factor and internal organization
191
Mergers and the market for corporate control
299
Agency problems and the theory of the firm
302
Theory of the firm managerial behavior agency costs and ownership structure
315
Organizational forms and investment decisions
336
The structure of ownership and the theory of the firm
345
An economists perspective on the theory of the firm
354
Ownership and the nature of the firm
361
References
371
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