Comments on: The Treatment of Frequency in Transaction Cost Economics http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/ Economics of organizations, strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, and more Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:27:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: MARCO SEGATO http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-70803 Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:26:16 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-70803 Hi Mr Klein,

The final work of my MSc is focused on TCE and in particular I’m working on a case study in order to evaluate the relevance of frequency on TCE.

As you wrote above, frequency has not been treated exhaustively in the literature. I looked a lot for a paper about the empirical evidence of frequency (as intended in the first use) on transaction costs but I didn’t found nothing interesting.

may be you colud help me

thanks in advance

ps: I’m sorry for my english

]]> By: Peter Klein http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-22836 Mon, 14 May 2007 21:39:59 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-22836 Torsten, yes, I think the third form of frequency can be interpreted as a kind of uncertainty (the subject heading for this discussion in the ASQ article is indeed “Uncertainty”). It doesn’t map in a straightforward way to the longer discussions of uncertainty elsewhere in Williamson’s writings (e.g., pp. 56-60 of Economic Institutions), however.

]]> By: Torsten Kleiss http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-22833 Mon, 14 May 2007 21:11:21 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-22833 Peter, thanks for the post. There is really not much written about the definition of frequency and I find Williamsons explanations not sufficient.
One remark to the third form: I would argue that the frequency of disturbances are part of the transactional dimension of uncertainty. Am I wrong?

]]> By: Peter Klein http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2279 Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:52:32 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2279 Jung-Chin, that is a great question. On learning in a TCE framework I highly recommend Mayer and Argyres, “Learning to Contract: Evidence from the Personal Computer Industry,” Organization Science 15(4), pp. 394–410.

http://www.atypon-link.com/INF/doi/pdf/10.1287/orsc.1040.0074

As I recall they don’t deal explicitly with the “frequency” variable as described above, but the point of the paper is to show how parties that contract with each other repeatedly adjust their behavior over time.

]]> By: Jung-Chin Shen http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2259 Wed, 06 Sep 2006 20:36:33 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2259 A great post!

One further question that I have about the concept of frequency is that this term is usually associated with learning in management literature. The three uses of frequency involve different types of learning and mutual learning. Would some of them be rejected under certain circumstances such as when the focal firm can easily learn from its past experience, others, or specific transacting partners?

]]> By: Peter Klein http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2254 Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:22:34 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2254 Hmmm, I guess we’re crowdsourcing. And because our objective is knowledge creation, rather than personal gain, we don’t care about the credit. (Though we’ll take coauthorship if anyone insists….)

Actually, I read somewhere that legal citation indexes are starting to track citations to academic blogs written by law professors. So perhaps bloggers can appropriate some of the gains after all.

]]> By: Joe Mahoney http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2252 Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:09:38 +0000 http://organizationsandmarkets.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/the-treatment-of-frequency-in-transaction-cost-economics/#comment-2252 Peter, you and Nicolai seem to place ideas for publishable papers on your blog. I am not too concerned, however, because you each have so many ideas you do not have time to do them all yourselves and so thanks for sharing.

Typically, the confusion in the literature is between the first and second uses of frequency that you described. I had not absorbed the third use of the term in my reading of the literature and so I thank you for being part of my education.

Empirical testing is, as you stated, rare along the frequency dimension (for each of the three uses) in TCE.

]]>