Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper some recent improvements and refinements of the mainstream Austrian theory of the firm are analyzed (Foss and Klein, 2012; Foss et al, 2007). Those refinements attempt to fuse the old Austrian-Coasean theory of the firm with a sophisticated analysis of entrepreneurship and capital theory, in order to broaden the scope and the application of the original intuition behind the Coasean theory that governance, planning and hierarchical mode of relationship are necessary features of an efficient market system. I criticize this strategy by combining the insights of the Austrian capital theory and the standard neoclassical theory of the firm, to show how the Coasean firm, both in its original and Austrian derivations misrepresents the real reasons and function of the firm in a market society. The main problem of this new synthesis is that it just broadens the old error committed by Mises and Rothbard, treating Coasean theory of the firm as central planning hierarchy to be consistent with Austrian argument against planning, and for economic calculation and entrepreneurship. In my analysis, the ingenious inclusion of the Austrian capital theory into the Coasean framework by Foss and Klein only adds another layer of errors to the original, untenable conception of the firm as a hierarchical and organizational entity by arguing that the firm is needed to handle the problem of heterogeneity of capital goods.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".