Capabilities and the Theory of the Firm

This essay seeks to locate the ideas of G. B. Richardson within the present-day discussion of the theory of the boundaries of the firm. Richardson differs from the mainstream of transaction-cost economics in that, like Coase and Knight before him, he sees the problem of market contracting as a matter of difficult coordination rather than as a problem of "opportunism" in the face of contractual hazards, and in that he effectively links together transaction costs and production costs, categories sharply partitioned by traditional price theory (which largely ignored the former) and by transaction-cost economics (which largely ignores the latter).