This long-awaited sequel to the modem classic "Markets and Hierarchies" develops and extends Williamson's innovative use of transaction cost economics as an approach to studying economic organization by applying it to work and labor as well as the corporation itself. In addition, Williamson explores its growing implications for public policy, including its potential influence on antitrust and merger guidelines, labor policy, and SEC and public utility regulations.

This study is based on the belief that economic organization is shaped by transaction cost economizing decisions. It sets out the basic principles of transaction cost economics, applies the basic arguments to economic institutions, and develops public policy implications. Any issue that arises, or can be recast as a matter of contracting, is usefully examined in terms of transaction costs. Transaction cost economics maintains that governance of contractual relations is mainly achieved through institutions of private ordering instead of legal centralism. This approach is based on behavioral assumptions of bounded rationalism and opportunism, which reflect actual human nature. These assumptions underlie the problem of economic organization: to create contract and governance structures that economize on bounded rationality while safeguarding transactions against the hazards of opportunism. The book first summarizes the transaction cost economics approach to the study of economic organization. It develops the underlying behavioral assumptions and the types of transactions; alternative approaches to the world of contracts are presented. Assuming that firms are best regarded as a governance structure, a comparative institutional approach to the governance of contractual relations is set out. The evidence, theory, and policy of vertical integration are discussed, on the basis that the decision to integrate is paradigmatic to transaction cost analysis. The incentives and bureaucratic limits of internal organization are presented, including the dilemma of why a large firm can't do everything a collection of small firms can do. The economics of organization in presented in terms of transaction costs, showing that hierarchy also serves efficiency and permits a variety of predictions about the organization of work. Efficient labor organization is explored; on the assumption that an authority relation prevails between workers and managers, what governance structure supports will be made in response to various types of job attributes are discussed, and implications for union organization are developed. Considering antitrust ramifications of transaction cost economics, the book summarizes transaction cost issues that arise in the context of contracting, merger, and strategic behavior, and challenges earlier antitrust preoccupation with monopoly. (TNM).

In this forthright challenge to relativist economic recipes for growth and culturalist-incrementalist views in institutional economics, Heller draws on Weber, Schumpeter, and Hayek to present a new universalistic vision of capitalism's depersonalized institutions as well as the ideological policies needed during constructed capitalist transitions.

Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.

This book presents a radical institutional approach to the analysis of capitalism. The author discusses a wide range of topics and puts forward a number of arguments that expose common ground in both neoclassical and Marxist orthodoxies.

Capitalism is the dominant economic framework in modern history, but it s unclear how it really works. Relying on the free movement and spontaneous coordination of seemingly infinitesimal market forces, its very essence is remarkably complex. Geoffrey M. Hodgson offers a more precise conceptual framework, defines the concepts involved, and illustrates that what is most important, and what has been most often overlooked, are institutions and contractsthe law. Chapter by chapter, Hodgson focuses in on how capitalism works at its very core to develop his own definitive theory of capitalism. By employing economic history and comparative analysis toward explanatory and analytical ends, Hodgson shows how capitalism is not an eternal or natural order, but indeed a relatively recent institution. If anyone were qualified to venture such a comprehensive and definitive analysis of such an important economic, legal, and social phenomenon, it is Geoffrey Hodgson. "Conceptualizing Capitalism" will significantly alter and carry forward our understanding of markets and how they work."

Contributors examine the nature & workings of capitalism from the perspective of economic sociology.

Over 630 million Chinese escaped poverty since the 1980s, the largest decrease in poverty in history. Studying 700 manufacturing firms in the Yangzi region, the authors argue that the engine of China’s economic miracle—private enterprise—did not originate at the top but bubbled up from below, overcoming initial obstacles set up by the government.

What is the relationship between internal development and integration into the global economy in developing countries? How and why do state–market relations differ? And do these differences matter in the post-cold war era of global conflict and cooperation? Drawing on research in China, India, and Russia and examining sectors from textiles to telecommunications, Micro-institutional Foundations of Capitalism introduces a new theory of sectoral pathways to globalization and development. Adopting a historical approach, the book's Strategic Value Framework shows how state elites perceive the strategic value of sectors in response to internal and external pressures. Sectoral structures and organization of institutions further determine the role of the state in market coordination and property rights arrangements. The resultant dominant patterns of market governance vary by country and sector within country. These national configurations of sectoral models are the micro-institutional foundations of capitalism, which mediate globalization and development.