The paper discusses the practical possibilities of achieving increased downstream processing and the policies that are commonly used for this purpose. It reviews the reasons why forward vertical integration is not always an optimal choice for extractive industry companies. It finds little...

The paper discusses the role of communication technologies in reducing the costs of using market exchange. It analyzes the comparative effect of new technologies on transactions which take place within and outside the firm using Coase's postulate of the size of the firm. Technologically...