According to New Institutional Economics, transactional activities, governance structures, institutions and beliefs and values are related hierarchally. Each element must be aligned with the adjacent level for transaction costs to be minimized. This framework is applied to the question of...

Organizational and contract economics have achieved an increasingly important role in analyses of the food, agribusiness, and agricultural sectors. In particular, formal theoretical models of contract design and firm integration have begun to appear in the leading agricultural economics...

This essay surveys the new institutional economics, a rapidly growing literature combining economics, law, organization theory, political science, sociology, and anthropology to understand social, political, and commercial institutions. This literature tries to explain what institutions are, how...

This essay surveys the new institutional economics, a rapidly growing literature combining economics, law, organization theory, political science, sociology, and anthropology to understand social, political, and commercial institutions. This literature tries to explain what institutions are, how...

Since its emergence in the 1970s the modern economic or Coasian theory of the firm has been discussed and challenged by sociologists, heterodox economists, management scholars, and other critics. This chapter reviews and assesses these critiques, focusing on behavioral issues (bounded...