The aim of the paper is to set the agency problem into a broad context of New Institutional Economics with an emphasis on historical connections. In the first section, I explain the historical evolution of basic theoretical concepts like the theory of firm, the theory of market process and the...

The economic theory of the last decades deals with how certain models of institutions and incentives could improve the coordination of individual actions in society. Setting rules regulating relationships between economic agents is considered as the key requirement of such coordination....