The Payoff to Public Investments in Pest-Management R&D: General Issues and a Case Study Emphasizing Integrated Pest Management in California

Pest-management technologies have had to adapt to address evolving pesticide resistance problems and changes in regulations driven by environmental and human health concerns. Integrated pest management, founded in the University of California, is an important example. Using California as a case study, this paper describes the post–World War II history of agricultural pest-management technology, documents the development and use of chemical pesticides, describes the role of public research, and measures the benefits and costs for five important commodities, emphasizing integrated pest management.     

Resources and transaction costs: how property rights economics furthers the resource‐based view

Property rights economics furthers the resource‐based view of strategic management in a number of ways. First, resources are conceptualized as being composed of multiple attributes for which property rights may be held. Second, a resource owner's ability to create, appropriate, and sustain value from resources depends on the property rights that he or she holds and on the transaction costs of exchanging, defining, and protecting them. While transaction costs are a major source of value dissipation, reducing such dissipation may create value. Implications for the RBV analysis of sustained competitive advantage are derived. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

spontaneous Social Order

A bstract . This paper relates to the emerging economics/sociology-nexus, in arguing that economists may have a lesson to learn from the work of the sociologist Alfred Schütz. The problem of coordination , which is the problem of theoretically demonstrating the possibility of spontaneous order in society , is discussed. While conventional economics and classical game-theory have not solved or even convincingly addressed this problem, it is explicitly addressed by Austrian and neo-institutional economics. It is argued that these two traditions in some important aspects dovetail with Schützian insights, in that the Schützian analysis of the structures of the life-world contains a number of pertinent insights into the coordination problem.     

Optimal Strategy and Business Models: A Control Theory Approach

This study picks up on earlier suggestions that control theory may further the study of strategy. Strategy can be formally interpreted as an idealized path optimizing heterogeneous resource deployment to produce maximum financial gain. Using standard matrix methods to describe the firm Hamiltonian, it is possible to formalize useful notions of a business model, resources, and competitive advantage. The business model that underpins strategy may be seen as a set of constraints on resources that can be interpreted as controls in optimal control theory. Strategy then might be considered to be the control variable of firm path, suggesting in turn that the firm's business model is the codification of the application of investment resources used to control the strategic path of value realization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The limits to designed orders: Authority under “distributed knowledge” conditions

We examine the argument, put forward by modern management writers and, in a somewhat different guise by Austrian economists, that authority is not a viable mechanism of coordination in the presence of “distributed knowledge” We define authority and distributed knowledge and argue that authority is compatible with distributed knowledge. Moreover, it is not clear on theoretical grounds how distributed knowledge impacts on economic organization. An implication is that the Austrian argument that designed orders are strongly constrained by the Hayekian dispersed knowledge (Hayek, Kirzner, Sautet) is less decisive than it has usually been taken to be. The positive flipside of this argument is that Austrians confront an exciting research agenda in theorizing how distributed knowledge impacts economic organization. JEL Codes B53, L20     

The determinants of industry concentration: two new empirical regularities

This paper reports two new empirical regularities concerning industry concentration. First, concentration levels closely correlate in related industries. Second, the correlation is moderated by the degree of relatedness between the industries. These regularities are derived from the Trinet database, using a survivor‐based measure of relatedness. We argue that these previously overlooked relations may be explained in terms of (1) ‘spillover effects’ between industries and (2) life cycle factors. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

'Tying the manager's hands': constraining opportunistic managerial intervention

We discuss and examine empirically a firm-level equivalent ofthe ancient problem of ‘tying the King's hands’,namely how to avoid managerial intervention that is undertakento reap private benefits but is harmful to overall value creation,that is, ‘managerial opportunism’. The link frommanagerial intervention to firm-level value-creation is moderatedby employee motivation. Thus, intervention in the form of managersoverruling employees or reneging on delegation may demotivateemployees, particularly when the intervention is perceived asbeing unfair, undertaken for personal gain, etc. We argue thata number of mechanisms, such as managers staking their personalreputation, employees controlling important assets, strong tradeunions, etc. may function as constraints on managerial proclivitiesto intervene, thus reducing the problem of managerial opportunism.We derive four hypotheses from these ideas, and test them, usingpath-analysis, on a rich dataset, based on 329 firms in theSpanish food and electric/electronic industries.     

The theory of the firm: The Austrians as precursors and critics of contemporary theory

Conclusion In the above, I have taken the theme of Austrian economics and economic organization through several variations. I hope to have taken steps towards establishing that not only were the Austrians important precursors of the contemporary theory of economic organization, but they may also contribute to existing theory as well as provide their distinctive perspective on economic organization. Space limitations have dictated, however, that I have been able to only scratch the surface. Assuredly, there is much more to be done on all the three themes I have been discussing, particularly on the last, constructive one.A number of excellent comments from Murray Rothbard and three anonymous referees is gratefully acknowledged. All remaining errors are the author's.