The Economic Nature of the Firm

• This is a book of classic and near-classic readings on issues in the theory of how firms are organized, written by economists well known in the field.

• Part I explores the general theme of the firm's nature and place in the market economy.

• Part II addresses the question of which transactions are integrated under a firm's roof and what limits the growth of firms.

• Part III examines employer-employee relations and the motivation of labor.

• Part IV studies the firm's organization from the standpoint of financing and the relationship between owners and managers.

Table of Contents

Editor's Preface

Reintroducing The Economic Nature of the Firm

Part I. Within and Among Firms: The Division of Labor

1. From The Wealth of Nations

2. From Capital

3. From Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit

4. From The Modern Corporation and Private Property

5. The use of knowledge in society

6. Corporate governance

Part II. The Scope of The Firm

7. The nature of the firm

8. Vertical integration, appropriable rents, and the competitive contracting process

9. The governance of contractual relations

10. The limits of firms: incentive and bureaucratic features

11. Bargaining costs, influence costs, and the organization of economic activity

12. The boundaries of the firm revisited

Part III. The Employment Relation, the Human Factor, and Internal Organization

13. Production, information costs, and economic organization

14. Contested exchange: new microfoundations for the political economy of capitalism

15. Understanding the employment relation: the analysis of idiosyncratic exchange

16. Multitask principal-agent analyses: incentive contracts, asset ownership, and job design

17. Work motivation

18. Worker participation

Part IV. Finance and The Control of the Firm

19. Mergers and the market for corporate control

20. Agency problems and the theory of the firm

21. Theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency costs, and ownership structure

22. Organizational forms and investment decisions

23. The rise in managerial stock ownership

24. Executive compensation as an agency problem

25. An economist's perspectivecon the theory of the firm

26. Ownership and the nature of the firm

References