企业的性质、社会成本问题与交易成本思想——关于科斯经济学说的历史回顾与理论述评

The Nature of the Firm, the Problem of Social Cost,and the Thought of Transaction Costs——The Historic and Theoretic Review on Coasian Economics

科斯教授在《企业的性质》与《社会成本问题》中引入了交易成本概念,不但改变了新古典经济学的研究范式,而且促成了新制度经济学派的产生。不过,这两篇文章其实都是强调交易成本在资源配置中所起的决定性作用。尽管科斯受图能的地理边界方法影响,但他最终还是构造一个跟交通成本性质不一样的交易成本概念去解释企业和市场的边界。

Professor Coase introduced the concept of transaction cost in The Nature of the Firm and The Problem of Social Cost, which not only changes the research paradigm of new classical economics, but also contributes to the generation of new institutional economics. Nevertheless, these two papers actually emphasize the decisive role of transaction costs in resource allocation. Meanwhile, from the writings of Coase's teacher Knight and student Cheung, the authors found that Coase's great creations originate in Professor Knight's Risk, Uncertainty and Profits and Some Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost, and they also inspire Professor Cheung later to write down The Contractual Nature of the Corporation and The Tenancy Theory. What's more, even though Coase was influenced by Thünen's geographic boundaries method, he eventually constructed the concept of transaction cost that has different nature with transport cost to explain the boundary between market and enterprise.