391 DS – Readings in Organizational Economics

2 or 3 Units.  Professor Gerard

Prerequisites:  ECON 400  or 450, ECON 380, Junior or Senior Standing, and Permission of Instructor

This reading group is a continuation of Economics 450, intended for students with a continuing interest in organizational economics.  Click for the provisional reading list: 

Armen Alchian, “Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory,” Journal of Political Economy 58(3): 211-221 (1950)

Erik Brynjolfsson and Thomas Malone , Vijay Gurbaxani, and Ajit Kambil (1994) Does Information Technology Lead to Smaller Firms? , Management Science, Vol. 40, No. 12 pp. 1645-1662.

 Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny (1997) “A Survey of Corporate Governance.”The Journal of Finance 52, 2: 737-783.

Yoram Barzel (1997)  “The Old Firm and the New Organization,” Chapter 5 of The Economic Analysis of Property Rights, Cambridge University Press.

Richard N. Langlois, The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler and the New Economy. London: Routledge, 2007.  

Chapter 4, Rise of the Corporation

Chapter 5, Return of the Entrepreneur

Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein 2005 “Entrepreneurship and the economic theory of the firm: Any gains from trade?” in Handbook of entrepreneurship: Disciplinary perspectives . Rajshree Agarwal , Sharon A. Alvarez , and Olav Sorenson (eds). Norwell, MA : Kluwer

Gary Libecap (1993) Contracting for Property Rights, Cambridge University Press

Gary Libecap and Steven Wiggins  (1984)  Contractual responses to the common pool: prorationing of crude oil production. The American Economic Review, 87-98.

Gerard Roland “Private and Public Ownership in Economic Theory,” in Privatization: Successes and Failures, (G. Roland, ed).  Columbia University Press.

Maxim Boycko, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny. “A Theory of Privatisation.” The Economic Journal (1996): 309-319.

Jonathan Levin and Steven Tadelis (2010) “Contracting for Government Services: Theory and Evidence from  US Cities,” The Journal of Industrial Economics58(3), 507-541.