The Economic Nature of the Firm

Randall S. Kroszner is the Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, which he joined in 1990. He was a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, DC, from 2001 to 2003. From March 2006 to January 2009 Professor Kroszner served as a Governor on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board. A specialist in the regulation of banking and financial institutions, corporate governance, international financial crises, debt restructuring, and monetary economics, he served as director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and editor of the Journal of Law and Economics. Professor Kroszner received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990. Louis Putterman is Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 1980. He is coauthor of Economics of Cooperation and the Labor-Managed Economy (1987, with John Bonin), author of Division of Labor and Welfare (1990), coeditor of Economics, Values, and Organization (1998, with Avner Ben-Ner), and author of Dollars and Change: Economics in Context (2001). Professor Putterman's current research interests focus on experimental economics and development and international economics, particularly the economics of China. He edited the first edition of The Economic Nature of the Firm and coedited the second edition with Professor Kroszner. Professor Putterman received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1980.

'Over the years, this classic reader has been a terrific source for those seeking to understand the nature of the firm. The updated material in the new edition will extend this distinguished record.' Bengt Holmstrom, MIT

• Preface: reintroducing the economic nature of the firm; Part I. Within and among Firms: The Division of Labor: 1. From The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith; 2. From Capital Karl Marx; 3. From Risk, Uncertainty and Profit Frank Knight; 4. From The Modern Corporation and Private Property A. A. Berle and G. C. Means; 5. The use of knowledge in society Friedrich Hayek; 6. Corporate governance Luigi Zingales; Part II. The Nature of the Firm: 7. The nature of the firm Ronald Coase; 8. Vertical integration, appropriable rents, and the competitive contracting process Benjamin Klein, Robert Crawford and Armen Alchian; 9. The governance of contractual relations Oliver Williamson; 10. The limits of firms: incentive and bureaucratic features Oliver Williamson; 11. Bargaining costs, influence costs, and the organization of economic activity Paul Milgrom and John Roberts; 12. The boundaries of the firm revisited Bengt Holmstrom and John Roberts; Part III. The Employment Relation, the Human Factor and Internal Organization: 13. Production, information costs, and economic organization Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz; 14. Contested exchange; new microfoundations for the political economy of capitalism Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis; 15. Understanding the employment relation: the analysis of idiosyncratic exchange Oliver Williamson, Michael Wachter and Jeffrey Harris; 16. Multitask principal-agent analyses: incentive contracts, asset ownership, and job design Bengt Holstrom and Paul Milgrom; 17. Work motivation Truman Bewley; 18. From Worker Participation John Pencavel; Part IV. Finance and the Control of the Firm: 19. Mergers and the market for corporate control Henry Manne; 20. Agency problems and the theory of the firm Eugene Fama; 21. Theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency costs, and ownership structure Michael Jensen and William Meckling; 22. Organizational forms and investment decisions Eugene Fama and Michael Jensen; 23. The rise in managerial stock ownership Clifford G. Holderness, Randall S. Kroszner and Dennis P. Sheehan; 24. Executive compensation as an agency problem Lucian Arye Bebchuk and Jesse M. Fried; 25. An economist's perspective on the theory of the firm Oliver Hart; 26. Ownership and the nature of the firm Louis Putterman.