This article draws on recent progress in economics—especially in the economics of information, property rights, transaction costs, induced innovations, household production, and the theory of the state—to analyze the functions and choices of social institutions, and to consider the mechanism of institutional change. My purpose is to show that institutions provide useful services and that instit...

for their helpful comments, to Joanne Spitz for editorial assistance, and to Lars Hansen and Jim Heckman for inviting me to participate in the symposium. Their invitation read in part, "We would like you to discuss his and other work on household and family economics, including its importance to social science and policy. We would like this to be a serious assessment of research, more than just...

The paper proposes an analytical framework for comparing different business models for producing information goods and digital services. It is based on three dimensions that also refer to contrasted literature: the economics of matching, the economics of assembling and the economics of knowledge management. Our framework attempts to identify the principal trade-offs at the core of choices among...

Process adjustment, also known as process targeting, is one of the classical problems in the field of quality control and production economics. In the process adjustment problem, it is assumed that process parameters are variables and the aim is to determine these parameters such that certain economic criteria are optimally satisfied. The aim of this paper is to determine the optimal process ad...

The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the value creation processes associated with expert systems. The paper employs a number of different applications of economics to explore the issues. Cost-benefit analysis, based in microeconomics and the economics of defense and government, is used to provide a basic measure of value. Contributions of value for expert systems are explored: econom...

neuroeconomics that has merged from the interaction of neuroscience, economics and psychology, is. promising new approach to understanding human behavior in economic analysis, especially as an selector (that is the fundamental issue is economics). this article illustrate the advantages of neuroeconomics and with focus on methodology of economics and ability of this branch of economic for theori...

The fact that trade protection hurts the economy of the country that imposes it is one of the oldest but still most startling insights economics has to offer. The idea dates back to the origin of economic science itself. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, which gave birth to economics, already contained the argument for free trade: by specializing in production instead of producing everything,...

We sketch the integral transform method in a close connection with its historical development and survey newer applications to problems in production economics and finance.