This book is a collection of essays about the emergence of routines and, more generally, about getting things organized in firms and in industries in early stages and in transition. …Read More
Economists have suggested at least since Mandeville and Smith that the virtues of capitalism lie in giving consumers what they want, and cheaply, through the vehicle of incentives to businesses and, in particular, their owners. It was the central task of economic theory in the twentieth century to show the precise sense in which, and conditions under which, this might be true.…Read More
The records of Oxford University Press for the three-quarters of a century from 1896 suggest an enterprise with very specific economic characteristics. It published a huge number of titles and sold them all over the world, but there was real uncertainty about what kinds of books or which specific titles would sell well, at least within any given period.…Read More
In a statement that is relatively famous, considering its position at the back of an old book, Alfred Marshall remarked on the ‘the manifold influences of the element of time’. He noted the obstacles those influences pose to mathematical analysis (or, he said, any analysis) of a complex, ‘real life’ problem – and the tendencies to over-simplification that often result.…Read More
