The Economics Organization and Management or The Making of Economic Policy

The Economics, Organization and Management

Author: Paul Milgrom

A systematic treatment of the economics of the modern firm, this book draws on the insights of a variety of areas in modern economics and other disciplines, but presents a coherent, consistent, innovative treatment of the central problems in organizations of motivating people and coordinating their activities. KEY TOPICS: Introduces the fundamental problems organizations encounter and explains why they occur. Discusses a number of patterns of response — showing why organizations are structured as they are, why they adopt the policies they do, and how they solve organizational problems themselves.

Go to: Play to Win or Food Science

The Making of Economic Policy: A Transaction Cost Politics Perspective

Author: Avinash K Dixit

The Making of Economic Policy begins by observing that most countries' trade policies are so blatantly contrary to all the prescriptions of the economist that there is no way to understand this discrepancy except by delving into the politics. The same is true for many other dimensions of economic policy.

Avinash Dixit looks for an improved understanding of the politics of economic policymaking from a transaction cost perspective. Such costs of planning, implementing, and monitoring an exchange have proved critical to explaining many phenomena in industrial organization. Dixit discusses the variety of similar transaction costs encountered in the political process of making economic policy and how these costs affect the operation of different institutions and policies.

Dixit organizes a burgeoning body of research in political economy in this framework. He uses U.S. fiscal policy and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as two examples that illustrate the framework, and show how policy often deviates from the economist's ideal of efficiency. The approach reveals, however, that some seemingly inefficient practices are quite credible attempts to cope with transaction costs such as opportunism and asymmetric information.

Copublished with the Center for Economic Studies and the Ifo Institute

Table of Contents:

	Series Foreword
	Foreword
	Preface
1	Economic Policymaking as a Political Process	1
2	The Transaction-Cost Politics Framework	37
3	Two Case Studies to Illustrate Transaction-Cost Politics	113
4	Some Reflections and Suggestions	143
	Appendix: Multiprincipal, Multitask Agencies	157
	References	173
	Name Index	185
	Subject Index	189