期刊名称：Annals of the University of Oradea : Economic Science
印刷版ISSN：1222-569X
电子版ISSN：1582-5450
出版年度：2009
卷号：XVIII
期号：02
出版社：University of Oradea
摘要：Ronald Coase article from 1937, The Nature of the Firm, meant a new way of thinking and conceiving of
the world, especially of economic organisations. Coase argued that the firm and the market represent two
alternative ways to organise the same transactions and he aimed to explain what exactly foregrounds the
choice between the two alternatives. Basically, Coase starts from the hypothesis that markets do not
operate without costs; their operation supposes a cost of the use of price mechanism, identified as
transaction cost. The latter, in its turn, explains the emergence of the firm as an alternative form to
coordinate transactions because, by internalising activities in its hierarchical structures, it can eliminate,
partially or totally, costs associated with transactions. Beginning with the 1970s–1980s, neoinstitutionalist
economists took over Coase’s message, developed it and started to explain the emergence of firms and
other business practices as reaction to the existence of these costs.
