The Nature of the Firm

"The Nature of the Firm" (1937) is an article by Ronald Coase. It offered an economic explanation of why individuals choose to form partnerships, companies, and other business entities rather than trading bilaterally through contracts on a market. The author was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991 in part due to this paper. Despite the honor, the paper was written when Coase was an undergraduate and he described it later in life as "little more than an undergraduate essay."[1]

The article argues that firms emerge because they are better equipped to deal with the transaction costs inherent in production and exchange than individuals are.[2][3] Economists such as Oliver Williamson,[4] Douglass North,[5] Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmström, Arman Alchian and Harold Demsetz expanded on Coase's work on firms, transaction costs and contracts.[2] Economists and political scientists have used insights from Coase's work to explain the functioning of organizations in general, not just firms.[3][4] Coase's work strongly influenced the New Economics of Organization (New Institutional Economics).[3]

Coase's article distinguished between markets as a coordination mechanism and firms as a coordination mechanism.[6]

  1. ^ Levi, Edward H. "Ronald Coase still stirs debate at 101". The University of Chicago. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
  2. ^ a b "Coase's theory of the firm". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  3. ^ a b c Moe, Terry M. (1984). "The New Economics of Organization". American Journal of Political Science. 28 (4): 739–777. doi:10.2307/2110997. ISSN 0092-5853. JSTOR 2110997.
  4. ^ a b Williamson, Oliver E. (1981). "The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach". American Journal of Sociology. 87 (3): 548–577. doi:10.1086/227496. ISSN 0002-9602. S2CID 154070008.
  5. ^ North Douglas C. (1982). Structure & change in economic history. W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-95241-X. OCLC 678902839.
  6. ^ Powell, Walter W. (1990). Research in organizational behaviour : an annual series of analytical essays and critical reviews. JAI Press. pp. 295–336. ISBN 1-55938-029-2. OCLC 23188932.