The Economic Nature of the Firm

Preface; The economic nature of the firm: a new introduction Louis Putterman and Randall S. Kroszner; Part I. Within and Among Firms. The Division of Labor: 1. From The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith; 2. From Capital Karl Marx; 3. From Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit Frank Knight; 4. The use of knowledge in society Friedrich Hayek; 5. Relational exchange: economics and complex contracts Victor Goldberg; 6. From The Visible Hand Alfred Chandler; Part II. The Scope of the Firm: 7. The nature of the firm Ronald Coase; 8. Vertical integration, appropriable rents, and the competitive contracting process Benjamin Klein, Robert Crawford and Armen Alchian; 9. The governance of contractual relations Oliver Williamson; 10. The organization of industry G. B. Richardson; 11. The limits of firms: incentive and bureaucratic features Oliver Williamson; 12. Bargaining costs, influence costs, and the organization of economic activity Paul Milgrom and John Roberts; 13. Towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm David Teece; Part III. The Employment Relation, The Human Factor, and Internal Organization: 14. Production, information costs, and economic organization Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz; 15. Contested exchange: new microfoundations for the political economy of capitalism Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis; 16. Understanding the employment relation: the analysis of idiosyncratic exchange Oliver Williamson, Michael Wachter and Jeffrey Harris; 17. Multitask principal-agent analyses: incentive contracts, asset ownership, and job design Bengt Holmstrom and Paul Milgrom; 18. The prisoners' dilemma in the invisible hand: an analysis of intrafirm productivity Harvey Leibenstein; 19. Labor contracts as partial gift exchange George Akerlof; 20. Profit sharing and productivity Martin Weitzman and Douglas Kruse; Part IV. Finance and the Control of the Firm: 21. Mergers and the market for corporate control Henry Manne; 22. Agency problems and the theory of the firm Eugene Fama; 23. Theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency costs, and ownership structure Michael Jensen and William Meckling; 24. Organizational forms and decision control Eugene Fama and Michael Jensen; 25. The structure of ownership and the theory of the firm Harold Demsetz; 26. An economist's perspective on the theory of the firm Oliver Hart; 27. Ownership and the nature of the firm Louis Putterman; References.