Paul Walker • May 03, 2013 •
As has been noted previously the theory of the firm is not well developed within Austrian economics. But his does not mean there have been no attempts at formulating an Austrian approach to the firm. One such attempt is that of Nicolai Foss and Peter Klein in their book Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment: A New Approach to the Firm. The classic … Read More
Paul Walker • Apr 29, 2013 •
In his latest weekly newsletter from economicprincipals.com David Warsh writes about attending a program celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of A Behavioral Theory of the Firm by March and Richard Cyert. Warsh says,The corporate landscape today is, of course, all but unrecognizable compared to what it was when March and Cyert wrote in 1963. The outlines of … Read More
Paul Walker • Apr 23, 2013 •
According to Sascha O Becker and Hans K. Hvide over at VoxEU.org the short answer is yes. Becker and Hvide write Governments try to boost competitiveness through a vast array of policies. Newly founded firms have the potential to give new impetus to an economy. The question arises: what matters more, the horse (i.e. the products) … Read More
Paul Walker • Feb 20, 2013 •
Another of the great old guard of economics has gone. As a theory of the firm man I think of Armen Alchian as one of the developers of the nexus of contracts view of the firm. This approach to the firm was developed in papers by Alchian and Demsetz (1972), Jensen and Meckling (1976), Barzel (1997), Fama (1980) and Cheung … Read More
Paul Walker • Jan 21, 2013 •
I have made a few changes to my paper "The Past and Present of the Theory of the Firm". The new version is available at SSRN The abstract reads: In this survey we give a short overview of the way in which the theory of the firm has been formulated w... Read More
Paul Walker • Jan 01, 2013 •
That the British car industry is not what it once was is obvious but you are left asking why it has collapsed so dramatically. Part of the answer may be found in the attitudes of the managers of British companies post World War two. In a short set of n... Read More
Paul Walker • Nov 29, 2012 •
Having been working on a survey of the theory of the firm I noted that an often neglected topic in the literature is that of state owned firms and their privatisation. Thus I added a short section on the literature on privatisation. There is a surpris... Read More
Paul Walker • Nov 12, 2012 •
Are we all Marxists now? At least as far as the theory of the firm is concerned. In a Journal of Finance paper back in 2000 Luigi Zingales wrote, [...] there is a clear Marxian flavor in the role played by ownership in Grossman and Hart (1986) and Har... Read More
Paul Walker • Oct 19, 2012 •
A few days ago Ele Ludemann at the Homepaddock blog noted that Co-ops key to feeding world and in a sense she is right. Co-ops are more common in argiculture than any other sector of the economy. The big question is Why? To see why start from the idea... Read More
Paul Walker • Oct 07, 2012 •
Over at Homepaddock Ele Ludemann is discussing the ownership of farms and the profitability of farms: These are usually larger family owned businesses. They have economies of scale that smaller ones lack and don’t have problems of governance and ma... Read More