Incomplete Contracts and Ownership: Some New Thoughts

摘要

Since Ronald H. Coase's famous 1937 article, economists have grappled with the question of what characterizes a firm and what determines its boundaries. Transaction cost economics (see, e.g., Oliver Williamson 1975, 1985; Benjamin Klein, Robert G. Crawford, and Armen A. Alchian 1978) argues that firms are important when contracts are incomplete, and parties make large relationship-specific investments. Property rights theory (see, e.g., Sanford J. Grossman and Oliver D. Hart 1986; Hart and John Moore 1990) refines this thinking by taking the view that the owner of a nonhuman asset possesses residual control rights over that asset, and that there is an optimal allocation of such residual control rights. As a consequence, not all activities should take place in a single firm.