The Role of Contract in Quality Assurance

In recent years a debate has raged about the accuracy of the cost-of-living index. A major bone of contention regards capturing the changes in the quality of goods. Were it easy to measure quality, disputes about the magnitude of the change would have not arisen. The difficulty in pinpointing quality is not merely an academic or policy question; it also poses a major problem for exchange. When the quality of the exchanged commodities is uncertain, costly disputes about what one gives and the other receives are bound to arise. Such disputes are a matter of property rights, of who owns what.Contracts and Vertical Integration, Agricultural and Food Policy,

罗纳德·科斯:社会成本的性质是研究企业问题的关键

三十年前,《社会成本问题》[1960]的发表,改变了产业组织领域,更扩展了该领域的范围。1本文简要评述了1960年以前该领域的状况,然后从几方面阐释了科斯论文如何改变了经济学思考的方式。早期发展交易成本总是以这种或那种方式在经济学中扮演重要角色:经济学家早就意识到,在专业化分工的经济中,将生产要素转换成效用并不仅仅是制造和运输。他们也意识到市场交换会受制于一些“摩擦“,即“做生意产生的成本“是正的,并且这