Wednesday 17 August 2016

Economics for Real People: Why do firms exist?

 

Blackboard-Firms

News for all of you from our friends at the Auckland Uni Economics Group. Here’s what they’re inviting you to tomorrow night: an an analysis of why firms exist even though most economic theories say they shouldn’t.

Only three years ago, the winner of the 1991 “Nobel Prize in Economics”, Ronald Coase, died aged 102. He won the prize largely for the ideas contained in his celebrated 1937 paper "The Nature of the Firm", which went unnoticed for around 30-40 years following publication.
    When it was “rediscovered” in the 1960s it then went on to transform not just the whole field of economic analysis but many economies around the world.
    How did his ideas influence the structure of the NZ economy? And how do the ideas of Coase influence how products are manufactured including the electronic device you using to read this message?
    And what is his explanation for why firms even exist?
   In this week's seminar, our guest speaker, Julian Darby, will use real life examples to examine the ideas of an economist who some call “Britain’s greatest economist since John Maynard Keynes.” [He’s actually far better than that sounds – Ed.]
We look forward to seeing you there!

    TIME: 6pm
    DATE: Thursday, August 18
    LOCATION: Case Room Two, Level Zero, Auckland Uni School of Business and Economics
                      (corner Symonds St & Grafton Rd; plenty of easy parking in the basement)

See you there!

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4 comments:

Paul Walker said...

Actually Coase is "Britain’s greatest economist including John Maynard Keynes".

Paul Walker said...

Actually Coase is "Britain’s greatest economist INCLUDING John Maynard Keynes".

Paul Walker said...

Strangely the Austrians are not strong on the firm. Per Bylund has written "One would think that the Austrian view, which is generally very critical of the over-simplifying neoclassical framework, would have supplied a theory of the firm based on sound economic theory. But despite the focus in Austrian economics on what Klein (2008a) calls “mundane economics,” and the fact that “the Austrians [have] so many necessary ingredients for a theory of the firm” (Foss and Klein, 2009, p. 3), there is no Austrian theory of the firm".

Two, recent, exceptions to this rule are "Organizing entrepreneurial judgment: a new approach to the firm" by Nicolai J Foss and Peter G Klein and "The problem of production: a new theory of the firm" by Per Bylund.

paul scott said...

I have dealt Cafe Hayek a devastating blow. Why America loses in trade with China. How it blows away Ohio firms. This is what happens when you send your pupils to Montessori school. We get above our station.
# http://cafehayek.com/2016/08/omg-were-not-paying-enough.html