In this paper, we integrate the equilibrium predictions of transaction cost economics and the intertemporal predictions of structural inertia theory to derive content-based predictions of the direction, rate, and amount of organizational adaptation. Specifically, we predict that poorly aligned firms (according to transaction cost principles) realize lower survival rates and lower profits than t...

Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890-1905), collaboration (1905-1940), and disengagement (post-1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics de...

There is no greater gap between economic theory and econometric practice than that which characterizes the literature on business investment in fixed capital. According to the neoclassical theory of capital, as expounded for example by Irving Fisher, a production plan for the firm is chosen so as to maximize utility over time. Under certain well-known conditions this leads to maximization of th...

Reading "'Ideal Theory' as Ideology," I found the distinction Mills makes between ideal-asidealized-model and ideal-as-descriptive-model to be very close to the distinction often found in Marxist political economy and philosophy between mental generalizations/idealizations and real abstractions, respectively--though this is a debate I've always had difficulty with. So, as I understand it, if bo...