The present paper revisits the path by which Coase came to set down the result now generally known as the Coase theorem in his 1960 article. I draw on both the published record and archival resources in an effort to clear away some of the mist and, as it will emerge, dispel some of the...

The paper takes the viewpoint of the neoinstitutional theory of the firm to analyse Germany's voluntary Dual Management System for Packaging Waste Collection and Recycling (DSD); namely, its governance structure and its contractual relations with upstream and downstream firms. Two aspects...

Recent thinking has emphasized the importance of consistency in a firm?s compensation policy. By starting from Williamson?s ideas about idiosyncratic exchange, this view can be supplied with some theoretical foundation. At the same time, the consistency view can be applied to a number of...

In the economic literature on market competition, firms are often modeled as single decision makers and the internal organization of the firm is neglected (unitary player assumption). However, as the literature on strategic delegation suggests, one can not generally expect that the behavior of...

Entrepreneurship is an important process in regional economic development. Especially the continued growth of a minority of new firms is of major significance to the commercialization of new ideas and employment growth. These growing new firms are transforming on a structural basis, like...

This paper views authority as the right to undertake decisions that impose externalities on other members of the organization. When only decision rights can be contractually assigned to one of the organization's stakeholders, the optimal assignment minimizes the resulting inefficiencies by...

Ich möchte in diesem Vortrag Beziehungen zwischen Gutenbergs Theorie der Unternehmung, die in seiner Habilitationsschrift angelegt und in den Grundlagen der Betriebswirtschaftslehre entfaltet ist, und aktuellen Entwicklungen in der Theorie der Unternehmung herstellen. Obwohl der Anlaß für...

Engel's verbal formulation of his Law expresses a "negativ stochastic association" of the bivariate distribution of income and food share across the population. Among the many different definitions of association four are chosen: Kendall's tau, negative quadrant dependence, stochastically...

Economic behavior strives for efficiency. Therefore, also evolving network structures should be a result of such a goal-oriented behavior. Traditionally, networks were assumed to be only temporary phenomena, since the prevailing organizational forms that comply with the efficiency postulate are...

In der ökonomischen Theorie haben Metaphern (als Formen eines bildhaften Sprachgebrauchs) immer eine besondere Rolle gespielt. Nach einem historischen Überblick über das Konzept von Metaphern wird die Geschichte des dominanten Stranges in der ökonomischen Theorie als Geschichte einer...