Overview

"In 1937, Ronald H. Coase published ""The Nature of the Firm,"" a classic paper that raised fundamental questions about the concept of the firm in economic theory. Coase proposed that the comparative costs of organizing transactions through markets rather than within firms are the primary determinants of the size and scope of firms. Coase won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics for this work. This volume derives from a conference held in 1987 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Coase's classic article. The first chapter affords an overview of the volume. It is followed by a republication of the 1937 article, and by the three lectures Coase presented at the conference. These lectures provide a lively and informative history of the origins and development of his thought. Subsequent chapters explore a wide-range of theoretical and empirical issues that have arisen in the transaction cost economic tradition. They illustrate the power of the transaction cost approach to enhance understanding not only of business firms, but of problems of economic organization generally. In addition to Coase's work, contributors include Sherwin Rosen, Paul Joskow, Oliver Hart, Harold Demsetz, Scott Masten, Benjamin Klein, as well as the volume's editors, Oliver E. Williamson, and Sidney G. Winter. The Nature of the Firm includes Coase's acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize in Economics."

Full Product Details

Author:   Oliver E. Williamson (Transamerica Professor of Business Economics, Transamerica Professor of Business Economics, University of California, Berkeley) ,  Sidney G. Winter (Chief Economist, Chief Economist, US General Accounting Office, Washington DC) ,  Ronald H. Coase (University of Chicago Law School, Illinois, USA)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.70cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.372kg
ISBN:  

9780195083569

ISBN 10:   0195083563
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   08 July 1993
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Introduction ; 1. The Nature of the Firm ; 2. The Nature of the Firm: Origin ; 3. The Nature of the Firm: Influence ; 4. Nobel Lecture ; 5. Transactions Costs and Internal Labor Markets ; 6. The Logic of Economic Organization ; 7. Asset Specificity and the Structure of Vertical Relationships: Empirical Evidence ; 8. Incomplete Contracts and the Theory of the Firm ; 9. The Theory of the Firm Revisited ; 10. On Coase, Competence, and the Corporation ; 11. A Legal Basis for the Firm ; 12. Vertical Integration as Organizational Ownership: The Fisher Body-General Motors Relationship Revisited

Reviews

the evolution of the theory is interesting, several important issues are discussed, and the suggestions for future research are illuminating ... For those not familiar with this literature, the book provides a clear exposition of its origins and key ideas. Business History

"""Our advice to anyone interested in organizations and organization theory is don't miss this book. It includes some of the past, present, and future of a major line of thought regarding the nature of the firm. It is an important contribution to the expanding interest in organization theory.""--Journal of Management ""Particularly timely given Coase's receipt of the 1991 Nobel Prize for economics....For students and noneconomists, the volume provides an accessible route into the now enormous literature on economic organization....Specialists, on the other hand, will find ample grist for their analytical mills.""--Business History Review ""The evolution of the theory is interesting, several important issues are discussed, and the suggestions for future research are illuminating. For those not familiar with this literature, the book provides a clear exposition of its origins and key ideas.""--Business History ""Many of the papers are exccellent. The book is accessible to advanced undergraduates and graduate students and valuable for specialists in the field. It is that rare conference volume which is interesting, enlightening, and important.""--Journal of Economic Literature ""A lively debate on economic approaches to the firm....It is unlikely that there is a better book than this one for understanding what the economics mainstream and periphery have to say today on the organization and governance of the firm.""--Administrative Science Quarterly ""Our advice to anyone interested in organizations and organization theory is don't miss this book. It includes some of the past, present, and future of a major line of thought regarding the nature of the firm. It is an important ontribution to the expanding interest in organization theory.""--Journal of Management ""Particularly timely given Coase's receipt of the 1991 Nobel Prize for economics....For students and noneconomists, the volume provides an accessible route into the now enormous literature on economic organization....Specialists, on the other hand, will find ample grist for their analytical mills.""--Business History Review ""The evolution of the theory is interesting, several important issues are discussed, and the suggestions for future research are illuminating. For those not familiar with this literature, the book provides a clear exposition of its origins and key ideas.""--Business History ""Many of the papers are exccellent. The book is accessible to advanced undergraduates and graduate students and valuable for specialists in the field. It is that rare conference volume which is interesting, enlightening, and important.""--Journal of Economic Literature ""A lively debate on economic approaches to the firm....It is unlikely that there is a better book than this one for understanding what the economics mainstream and periphery have to say today on the organization and governance of the firm.""--Administrative Science Quarterly"

Author Information

Oliver E. Williamson is a highly distinguished business economist and the author or editor of several books and articles, most famous being Markets and Hierarchies (The Free Press, New York, 1975). He recently edited another book for Oxford, Organizational Theory: From Chester Barnard to the Present and Beyond (1990). He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1965-77), Yale University (1983-8), the University of Warwick (1973), the University of Kyoto (1983), Harvard University (1987), Indiana University (1987). He has also delivered lectures at a wide range of universities, including, in Europe Lund and Madrid Univeristies. He is on the Editorial Boards of several journals: Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization; Journal of Economic Organization; Journal of Japanese and International Economics; Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance; Organization Studies; Regulation; Organization Science; and Cambridge Surveys of Economic Literature. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Ronald Coase won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1991 for achieving a `breakthrough in understanding the institutional structure of the economy'. He taught at the London School of Economics from 1935-51, where he produced `The Nature of the Firm' (1937), which has had a profound effect on economists. He is well known to economists for the Coase Theorem, which he presented in a pathbreaking paper in 1960. He comes from Middlesex, but emigrated to America and he has held posts at the University of Chicago Law School for several years. Oliver D. Hart, who recently delivered the Clarendon Lectures in Economics at Oxford, is at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as is Paul L. Joskow. Benjamin Klein is at the University of California, Los Angeles; Scott E. Masten is at the University of Michigan; and Sherwin Rosen is at the University of Chicago.

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