INTRODUCTION
Co-ordination and capabilities
In 1974 George B. Richardson, who had been a Reader at Oxford University and a Fellow of St John’s College, became Chief Executive of Oxford University Press. In doing so he consciously abandoned his career in economics, because of an apparent lack of interest in his work by fellow economists and his own dissatisfaction with the trend of economic thinking. After managing Oxford University Press for fifteen years, he became Warden of Keble College, Oxford, and retired from that position in September 1994. In January 1995 two dozen economists met in St John’s College for a colloquium which was designed not only to mark his formal retirement but also to welcome him back to economics. (The colloquium was organised by the editors, but Professor John Kay, then with the London Business School and Chairman of London Economics, and now Director of Oxford University Business School, offered to handle the practical arrangements with St John’s College, for which the editors are extremely grateful.) The participants were representative of a growing number of economists who have developed an interest in, and appreciation of, Richardson’s work, which has been marked by the publication of a second edition of his Information and Investment, incorporating reprints of two articles, a new Introduction and a foreword by David Teece. The chapters which follow constitute a selection from the papers presented at the colloquium, all of which received comments from Richardson himself, together with a paper from Denis O’Brien, who was not able to attend. In this Introduction, we wish to introduce these chapters and identify the themes in them which correspond to the themes in his work and are of contemporary relevance.
In a letter to one of the editors, Richardson said of himself that ‘Perhaps we each of us have only one song to sing – with variations’ (Richardson 1993). On the other hand, as Stan Metcalfe states in his entry in the The Elgar Companion to Institutional and Evolutionary Economics:
In Richardson’s work are found clear insights into modern debates on markets v. hierarchies, the stability of prices, the economics of information, the basis for rational expectations, and the economic reform of socialist economies. More significantly, by emphasizing competition as a process based upon differentiated firms, Richardson anticipated many of the questions credited to modern evolutionary economic theory.
(Metcalfe 1994: 241)
We may add to Metcalfe’s list recent writing on networks, on the capabilities view of the firm, industrial policy and much else. How can one theme, one song, relate to all this?
The paradox vanishes on the realisation that Richardson’s theme is the coordination of specialised activities, each requiring distinctive capabilities, in complex systems. He seeks to explain how real economies are able to achieve some measure of successful co-ordination given the dispersion of knowledge which is represented by the distinctiveness of capabilities: hence the title of this book. Since co-ordination, sometimes presented in the form of allocative efficiency, is at the heart of economic theory, and since Richardson challenges the prevalent theoretical treatment of these issues, his work has profound implications both for the substance of economics and for the ways in which economists proceed.
As already indicated, almost all of Richardson’s papers went largely unnoticed by the economics profession at the time they were produced. The reason for this neglect, which is considered more fully in Chapter 2, lies in their combination of strong originality, inspiration from non-Walrasian sources (notably Marshall and Hayek) and unwelcome subversive potential.
It is in Information and Investment (1960) that we find the fullest statement of Richardson’s song. It is composed in a rather standard way: build up tension and release this tension. On the whole, however, the composition is performed sotto voce; like his one-time thesis adviser, John Hicks, Richardson speaks to the reader in a soft, persuasive style, and is always careful to explain what he is doing and why he is doing it.
He begins by criticising the superficial way in which economists have traditionally treated the process of co-ordination, pointing out that the attainment of equilibrium depends on expectations. However, expectations are based on information, but how much information economic agents are able to acquire and how reliable that information is depends on the structure of the markets in which they operate. Thus Richardson is diagnosing a problem – the co-ordination of dispersed and incomplete knowledge – which is of crucial interest to Austrian economists, and he is anticipating a Marshallian answer by pointing to the role of markets as information structures.
Richardson demonstrates in a long-run Walrasian setting that general equilibrium cannot be a configuration that a perfectly competitive economy could be expected to approach. Producers are unable to co-ordinate their investment decisions because they lack the necessary knowledge of other producers’ plans; consequently there is no logical basis for the long-run supply curve in this setting. Like Sraffa (1926) more than three decades earlier, in directing his attack towards the supply curve Richardson is identifying a theoretical anomaly in price theory; however, his attack is far more fundamental and cannot be met by Sraffa’s proposals. For Richardson is criticising the neoclassical idea of the atomistic individual producer or consumer existing in a complete institutional vacuum. His targets are not rationality or individualism as foundational concepts, but the very special interpretation that has come to be imposed on them by economic theorists; he is arguing that rationality, understood as the ability to make informed decisions, has to be embedded in a supporting and stability-providing network of institutions. Real economies are stabilised by the presence of numerous phenomena that represent imperfections relative to the Walrasian ideal, but which are necessary for the effective working of the economy. Richardson is thus anticipating the concerns of modern neo-institutionalist economists (Langlois 1986).
The stabilising mechanisms in question incorporate vertical integration, credit market imperfections, the Penrose effect, covert collusion, price notification schemes and much else, including sheer ignorance. Their overall effect is to stabilise producers’ plans by making adjustment to a co-ordinated state somewhat sluggish – and therefore possible. The well-known stability problem of Walrasian economics is thus solved as a result of being restated in non-Walrasian terms.
During the 1960s Richardson applied the theoretical reasoning of Information and Investment to policy issues, such as the problems on which he worked as a member of the British Monopolies Commission, including price notification schemes (Richardson 1967) and restrictive trade practices in general (1965a). He also applied it to problems of socialist allocation (Richardson 1971) and to consultancy work for the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers’ Association (Richardson 1969).
A notable feature of Richardson’s analysis of the co-ordination problem is his emphasis on the need to co-ordinate complementary investments. In his 1972 paper he draws on Penrose’s (1959) analysis of distinctive capabilities to provide a rationale for vertical inter-firm arrangements, arguing that these arrangements allow the qualitative co-ordination of capabilities which, though closely complementary, are also dissimilar and therefore, in accordance with the principles of specialisation, best managed within separate organisations. However, the analysis has much wider implications: to paraphrase Hayek (1945) with a bow to Richardson, ‘the marvel’ is precisely that competition and co-operation together ensure that effective use is made of capabilities that are not possessed by any single firm.
Richardson’s final publication before his recent return to economics was a paper on ‘Adam Smith on competition and increasing returns’ (1975). Although concerned with doctrinal history, this is a systematic and radical statement of Richardson’s own economics, in which he both demonstrates the affinities of his own thought to that of Smith and explores a number of themes that were not fully developed in his earlier work. The stance taken is evolutionary and disequilibrium-oriented, emphasising path-dependence and increasing returns. Kaldor’s paper on ‘The irrelevance of equilibrium economics’ (1972) is approvingly quoted.
Like his anticipation of the concerns of neo-institutional economists, this evolutionary formulation clearly suggests the contemporary relevance of Richardson’s thought. It is also relevant to firm strategy and growth theory. Richardson’s ideas and insights have not been fully incorporated in contemporary work on such issues and their implications have not been fully developed. Our objective in presenting the chapters which follow is to encourage further development of his ideas, not least through rereading his works.
In Chapter 2 Peter Earl relates Richardson’s work and methods to the corpus of economics and seeks to explain the general lack of response within the profession. In the process he offers insights into questions which may be asked of any discipline, and which recur in several subsequent chapters. Why do some problems become a focus of attention at the expense of others which may seem to disinterested observers no less important? How do particular people try to deal with particular problems, and why? What explains the reception which their work receives?
Earl has no difficulty in demonstrating that the market for economic ideas cannot be characterised as an equilibrium of optimising agents – unless the crucial analysis is buried in the definitions of equilibrium and optimisation. Market processes, in academia as well as in the economy, depend on information and institutions, and those wishing to trade in the marketplace of economics face co-ordination problems of the kind that Richardson analysed in Information and Investment.
In seeking to explain why Richardson’s fundamental criticism of the perfectly competitive model was neither refuted nor accepted but simply ignored, Earl takes issue with an explanation put forward some years ago by one of the editors (Loasby 1989: 99). That editor is now inclined to agree with Earl that the principal reason was probably a widespread feeling that since actual competition seemed to work fairly well the model of perfect competition, which combined the merits of familiarity and apparent rigour, could be safely, and comfortably, retained. ‘The argument in favour of competition does not rest on the conditions that would exist if it were perfect’, as Hayek (1949: 104) observed; but that argument is ignored in favour of the familiar analysis. Ronald Coase’s notable failure to persuade economists to accept the message of ‘The problem of social cost’ (Coase 1960), which was published in the same year as Information and Investment, is certainly consistent with that explanation; for Richardson and Coase were both arguing that ‘current economic analysis is incapable of handling many of the problems to which it purports to give answers’ (Coase 1988: 15). This is a sad commentary on the standards of conceptual, as distinct from technical, rigour within economics.
In Chapter 3 George Richardson revisits his 1972 article on ‘The organisation of industry’. By focusing on the need to co-ordinate specialised activities, each of which requires specific capabilities, he links it with the theme of Information and Investment; and by setting this co-ordination problem within the context of endogenous growth, which entails changes in the structure of both industries and individual firms, he invokes the argument of the last article that he wrote before abandoning economics – ‘Adam Smith on competition and increasing returns’. His principal subject in this chapter is the management of a business as a microeconomy, and it is illuminated by his own experience as Chief Executive of Oxford University Press. Management is not adequately represented by the selection of production plans from a well-defined production set; and though access to information is important, Richardson believes that patterns of experience and skills – capabilities – are more important than transaction costs, as these are normally defined, in explaining the scope of each firm, its internal organisation, which relies on authority, incentives and internal prices, and its relationships with other firms (what Marshall called its ‘external organisation’). He disagrees with Oliver Williamson’s emphasis on combating opportunism: like Edith Penrose, he believes that the primary reason for firms is the co-ordination of the growth and use of knowledge, including knowledge of performance skills.
Jacques-Laurent Ravix focuses explicitly on the relationship between the work of Richardson and that of Coase, and examines this relationship within a methodological perspective. He points out that ‘methodology matters because of its real effects on analytical developments’ (Chapter 4) – in this particular instance because a focus on allocative efficiency leads to a very restricted view of information and to the neglect of productive capabilities, thereby encouraging the conception of economics as a tautological rather than an empirical science. It is not, therefore, surprising that, as Coase observed in 1972, economists have so little to say ‘about what firms actually do’ (Coase 1988: 65). Coase challenged marginalist theory by pointing to the costs of using the price mechanism, and demonstrated that a recognition of these costs could explain the scope of a firm in a way that resolved an old dilemma of perfect competition (and of imperfect competition too, as he pointed out). As Langlois observes in Chapter 10, the scope of the firm in price theory is a matter of assumption.
However, Coase’s own theoretical system did not deal satisfactorily with inter-firm transactions, which are far more important than one would expect from Coase’s (or Williamson’s) writings, and it was precisely this theoretical deficiency that provided the focus of Richardson’s ‘The organisation of industry’. Whereas Coase had replaced the product as the unit of analysis by the individual transaction, Richardson selected the specific productive activity as his unit. Though Coase had recognised that ‘[a] given set of activities will facilitate the carrying out of some activities but hinder the performance of others’ (1988: 63), he was unable to theorise about the relationship; but Richardson employed the concepts of similarity and complementarity to explain how the co-ordination of economic activities is distributed between firms, markets and inter-firm networks – and to provide the ingredients for an analysis of innovation. Competition, as a process, is preserved because the irreducible ambiguity of information encourages firms repeatedly to draw different conclusions about their prospects from the same data.
Ravix’s juxtaposition of Richardson and Coase is followed, in Chapter 5, by Richard Arena and Claire Charbit’s juxtaposition of Richardson and Philip Andrews as interpreters and developers of Marshall’s economics. Marshall’s treatment of markets was ambiguous: he offered general principles which he intended to apply in his second volume; and in the absence of this second volume the ambiguity has been resolved in accordance with methodological preconceptions (and with little regard by some interpreters for those elements of that volume which appeared in Industry and Trade, 1923). Arena and Charbit draw attention to Andrews’s concern for the particularities of specific markets, each of which is constituted by those with the relevant knowledge needed to use it (as Menger had included knowledge of use in his definition of a good), and match this with Richardson’s citation of Marshall’s warning against ‘plain and simple doctrine’ and his extensive discussion of particular arrangements in Information and Investment. They then go on to consider Marshall’s treatment of human behaviour within society, which is reflected in market behaviour, and of the influences of convention and adaptation on that behaviour, emphasising his preference for free choice rather than competition as the fundamental principle of modern economies, and conclude by examining the reflections of this treatment in the work of Andrews and Richardson.
Denis O’Brien was among the first economists to appreciate the force of the ‘profound and entirely valid criticism of general equilibrium’ (Chapter 6) in Information and Investment, but he has always been uneasy about what he considers to be Richardson’s unjustifiably favourable attitude in that book towards cartels and planning. His chapter (Chapter 6) examines the source of this unease, which is methodological. As Earl notes in Chapter 2, Richardson adopted Hicks’s method of thinking through problems without attempting systematically to confront his conclusions with evidence, either from econometric analysis or, as Andrews did, by visiting firms. (As is now well known, Hicks had a poor opinion of Andrews’s work.) But this might not have mattered had Richardson appreciated the difficulty of remedying the fundamental incoherence of perfectly competitive general equilibrium by introducing Marshallian and Austrian elements which were incompatible with it. (The Austrian criticism of central planning is, equally, a criticism of the perfectly competitive equilibrium model on which the case for planning is based.) O’Brien argues that Richardson fails to make a consistent distinction between perfect competition, which excludes all competitive activity, and competition in real-world markets, which provide much of the information which is needed for co-ordination. In particular, Richardson fails, in O’Brien’s view, to appreciate the full implications of Marshall’s treatment of time, both for the practical solution of the co-ordination problem and for the relevance of that problem as defined within a purely axiomatic system.
In Chapter 7 John Nightingale provides another perspective on Information and Investment by comparing it with Jack Downie’s The Competitive Process. Whereas Richardson had tried to supply a missing theory of equilibration, Downie simply dismissed the notion of equilibration as irrelevant to explaining economic progress. (Richardson came close to echoing this judgement in his 1975 article on Adam Smith.) This freed him to develop an analysis of historical causation, which takes the form of an evolutionary theory. The selection pressures in competitive – not, of course, perfectly competitive – markets, and their financial consequences, lead to a convergence on best practice technology (the transfer mechanism); but they also provide a strong incentive for the laggards to develop improvements which will arrest, and sometimes even reverse, their decline (the innovation mechanism). Thus variety is continually renewed, providing a changing menu for continuing selection; and in contrast to biological evolution, the generation and reduction of variety are joint products of a competitive system. Downie’s theory of progress depends (like Marshall’s) on the tendency to variation among firms, whereas Richardson’s search for means of equilibration and the theoretical context in which he defined his problem (to which O’Brien draws attention) led him to focus in Information and Investment on a typical firm. His later articles of 1972 and 1975 and his chapter in this book mark a change in emphasis in both problem definition and analytical method.
Whereas O’Brien argues that in 1960 Richardson, though drawing on the Marshallian and Austrian traditions, did not make full use of them, Nicolai Foss (Chapter 8) argues that the full range of his work provides an excellent basis for a productive combination of those traditions. He begins by outlining the main features of each, notably their concern with change and with institutions and organisations as means of adapting to and promoting change, and seeks to demonstrate that the apparent disjunction between them is the result of differences in focus which are not conflicting but complementary. He then identifies Marshallian and Austrian (especially Hayekian) themes in Richardson’s work, all of which is related to the organisation of knowledge in a production economy; and in his final section he proposes a common theme for Austrians and Marshallians which draws directly on Richardson’s ideas: a theory of the firm in the market, which emphasises capabilities, institutions, flexibility and innovation.
Capabilities provide the theme of Brian Loasby’s chapter (Chapter 9). He begins with Adam Smith’s theory of endogenous growth through the division of labour, which promotes the discovery of differentiated knowledge, and then offers a two-dimensional categorisation of knowledge: knowing that v. knowing how (citing Gilbert Ryle’s Concept of Mind, 1949); and direct v. indirect knowledge. The Austro-Marshallian theme of Chapter 8 is continued in a review of Marshall’s and Hayek’s early ventures into evolutionary psychology, which suggest that performance skills are much more important relative to ratiocination than one would suspect from economic models. Decision-making itself is not an unambiguously logical process, but depends on situationally relevant capabilities. As Smith recognised, everyone faces a problem of co-ordination in the form of knowing how to get things done by other people; and the solution is not to be found in rational choice theory. It is often found in organisations such as firms and in inter-firm relationships which embody structures of complementary knowledge. Firms may find competitive advantage in distinctive capabilities, direct and indirect – as Drucker told us many years ago; but capabilities, like other kinds of knowledge, are never static but always conjectural. A variety of capabilities provides diversity within a system and therefore reserves against unforeseeable contingencies – which may stimulate the development of new capabilities.
Richard Langlois argues in Chapter 10 that because of his focus on the coordination of capabilities Richardson is ‘as much a critic as an ally’ of modern theorists of the firm. Since the firm in price theory is defined as a supplier of an identifiable product, its boundaries are subject to assumption, not explanation. Modern transaction cost theory seeks to supplement price theory by combining cognitive limitations and a specific behavioural assumption of opportunism in order to generate an additional category of incentive problems, which are resolved by the design of efficient organisations, or, in property rights and moral hazard theories, by efficient contracts. But this theoretical system bypasses Coase’s concern for qualitative co-ordination. Richardson shares this concern, both in his 1960 study of co-ordination (though this is independent of Coase’s writing) and in ‘The organisation of industry’; and his distinctive contribution, already discernible in 1960 but central in 1972, is to bring production costs back into the theory of the firm, not as a device to explain prices and output but to provide a realistic explanation of industrial structure. In Langlois’s terms, the organisation of industry, and above all the changing organisation of industry, requires the co-ordination both of commitments and of production; and this dual requirement entails a fine balance between stability and flexibility in economic systems.
Richardson’s argument that co-ordination depends on information has been a primary inspiration of Mark Casson’s conceptualisation of firms as information-handling systems, which is the theme of Chapter 11. Because change is continuous, co-ordination requires a sequence of decisions; and information is valuable to a firm only if it can affect decisions. The value of each specific item of information, which is the product of the cost of being wrong and the reduction in the probablility of being wrong which results from obtaining that particular information, should be balanced against its cost. The sources of information are dispersed because of the division of labour, for managers will acquire much relevant information (for example about markets or production costs) in the performance of their specialised activities. Dealing with interdependencies requires information to be synthesised; when its tacit content is significant interpretation may be problematic and best handled within a relatively flat and informal structure. Some kinds of information may affect decisions only if other kinds falls within a particular range; then information sources may be ordered in a sequence which generates a well-defined hierarchy. Casson suggests that the typical example is the priority of market information over information about production costs. He then considers the quality of information, which depends on both the capabilities – discussed in the two preceding chapters – and the honesty of the sources. Honesty may be encouraged both by cultural norms and by competition, which may be internal or external. By applying this analysis to the multinational enterprise, Casson concludes that the reduction in trade barriers has increased both the interdependence of market-related decisions and the substitution possibilities in production; we therefore observe the global management of markets coupled with a dispersion of production, both within the organisation and, increasingly, through outsourcing.
In Chapter 12 Neil Kay draws on Richardson’s analysis of ‘dense networks of co-operation’ to explain the recent popularity of joint ventures. He notes that complementary activities can be co-ordinated by contract when the requirements can be clearly specified in advance, but that ambiguity, uncertainty and the prospect of novelty create a need for continuing management. Kay argues that the governance costs of a single project will normally be higher when it is managed as a joint venture, which involves joint control, a mixture of direction and contract, and overlapping ownership rights, than when it is subject to unitary control. But if this project is one of many, then the local advantages of unified management for each business unit may be outweighed by the systematic difficulties of managing within a single firm a variety of complementary assets many of which will not be at all similar. Kay is not comparing equilibria but explaining a historical sequence: in the early stages of a firm’s growth internalisation is likely to be most efficient, but as the number and range of activities grows, the additional costs for the existing complex business of incorporating yet another complementarity begin to outweigh the additional costs of handling this particular complementarity as a joint venture. This explanation accounts for the common pattern of large firms turning to joint ventures after a sequence of mergers, and Kay extends it to explain the frequency of multiple collaboration between pairs of firms and the emergence of clusters of firms which share partners.
Gavin Reid’s chapter (Chapter 13) is related to Richardson’s work by both method and topic. Reid begins by recalling Richardson’s (1964b) discussion of the limits to a firm’s rate of growth, which was grounded on evidence collected by an Oxford research group, and his conclusion that the principal obstacle is the difficulty of expanding the management team. Bidding up the price is not an adequate remedy, for the task of management, as noted in other chapters, is qualitative co-ordination. A particular problem for the more adventurous entrepreneur is the limited flexibility of both organisations and individuals, which is not adequately represented by the rising cost curves of the textbooks but is fully consistent with Richardson’s, and Penrose’s, analysis. Reid then uses the evidence collected from his fieldwork with seventy-three small firms to test Richardson’s conclusion that there is a trade-off between efficiency and growth, and therefore between profitability and growth. He divides these firms into three organisational categories – sole proprietors, partnerships and private companies – which match their ranges of size and also their organisational histories; and he finds both that growth rates decline across the categories and that within each category the smaller firms tend to grow faster. The implication that increasing business complexity retards growth is supported by a simultaneous equation model, which also shows a trade-off between growth and profitability.
In the final chapter Paul Robertson uses Richardson’s ideas, and follows Richardson’s methodological recommendation of tolerance and eclecticism, to examine the scope for government innovation policy. He begins by distinguishing between uncertainty about future events or the actions of other people (the co-ordination problem posed by Richardson in the opening chapter of Information and Investment) and ignorance, which itself may be subdivided into ignorance of what already exists and the absence of solutions to problems that seem potentially soluble. Robertson’s main emphasis is on the communication of knowledge, the fundamental problem of which is to match sources with appropriate recipients. Since the need for communication is likely to arise only because the two parties interpret knowledge in different contexts, there is no simple means of identifying relevant matches; and so the principles on which any piece of knowledge should be codified in order to create a specific link can be sensibly decided only when the link has already been made. Thus, though governments may be able to help, especially in defining standards, they may also frustrate potentially valuable communications. Governments may, however, improve absorptive capacity by appropriate education. Robertson discusses the relationships between innovation and industrial form, and, using Richardson’s categories of similar and complementary capabilities, questions the value of general prescriptions, suggesting instead that appropriate policy should be context-specific. The inherent tendency to inflexibility in mature industries, which tend to constrict the range of their absorptive capacity in the process of strengthening their existing capabilities, pose particular problems for governments. A successful policy for innovation is likely to be neither simple nor easy to work out.
The recurrent themes in this collection are those of Richardson’s own work. Because that work has been generally neglected but highly valued by a minority, it is natural that several authors are much concerned with the ways in which the enterprise of economics is conducted – in a word, methodology; and because Richardson has written so incisively about the co-ordination of economic activities, it seems natural to enquire into the causes of co-ordination failure within the community of economists. In fact, the problems of economists and those of the economy have a common foundation in the characteristics of the human brain, which has great potential – provided that the development of this potential is restricted to a small segment of the possibilities that are initially open. The knowledge available to a community can be greatly increased if it is divided among members of that community: that is why the division of labour is the foundation of both productive and academic knowledge. It allows workers, managers, consumers and academics to develop particular ways of framing problems which facilitate the development of particular kinds of specialised knowledge.
There is a consequent need for co-ordination of knowledge; however, that knowledge is not only dispersed but differently framed. It is therefore not well represented by the conventional definition of the co-ordination problem. (It is not surprising that the codification systems favoured by economists often baffle or amaze outsiders.) Also ignored in most economic theory is the possibility – indeed the virtual certainty – that the way in which each of us frames problems will prevent us from recognising significant opportunities or major threats. The organisation of knowledge is therefore a pervasive problem for firms, governments and members of an academic discipline, and a failure of vision within any field is a methodological failure. However, no universally correct method is available. This is the real argument for competition and against unified planning. Opportunism is an important complication, but it is a supplement to more fundamental analysis, as our authors explicitly or implicitly agree. Since knowledge is never complete but always capable of improvement, these authors share a preference for process rather than equilibrium as an organising principle; and that leads them to favour economists who have, in varying degrees, shared this preference: that means, notably, Adam Smith, Marshall and (some of) the Austrians. But their only dogma is to avoid being dogmatic.
APPENDIX
The published work of George B. Richardson
Richardson, G. B. (1953) ‘Imperfect knowledge and economic efficiency’, Oxford Economic Papers 5: 136–56.
—— (1955) ‘Schumpeter’s history of economic analysis’, Oxford Economic Papers 7: 136–50.
—— (1956) ‘Demand and supply reconsidered’, Oxford Economic Papers 8: 113–26.
—— (1959) ‘Equilibrium, expectations and information’, The Economic Journal 69: 223–37.
—— (1960/1990) Information and Investment: A Study in the Working of the Competitive Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—— (1964a) Economic Theory, London: Hutchinson.
—— (1964b) ‘The limits to a firm’s rate of growth,’ Oxford Economic Papers 16: 9–23.
—— (1965a) ‘The theory of restrictive trade practices’, Oxford Economic Papers 17: 432–49.
—— (1965b) ‘Les Relations entre firmes’, Economie Appliquée 18: 407–30.
—— (1995c) ‘Ideal and Reality in the choice of techniques,’ Oxford Economic Papers 17: 291–298.
—— (1966) ‘The pricing of heavy electrical equipment: competition or agreement?’, Bulletin of the Oxford University of Economics and Statistics 28: 73–92.
—— (1967) ‘Price notification schemes’, Oxford Economic Papers 19: 359–69.
—— (1969) The Future of the Heavy Electrical Plant Industry, London: British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers’ Association Ltd.
—— (1971) ‘Planning versus competition’, Annex to G. B. Richardson (1960/1990) Information and Investment, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—— (1972) ‘The organisation of industry’, Economic Journal 82: 883–96.
—— and Brown, B. C. (1974) ‘Economic Implications of Popular Growth in the United Kingdom’, in Parry, H. B. (ed.) Population and Its Problems, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—— (1975) ‘Adam Smith on competition and increasing returns’, in A. S. Skinner and T. Wilson (eds) Essays on Adam Smith, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
—— (1990) Information and Investment, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—— (1995) ‘The Theory of the Market Economy,’ Revue Économique 46: 1487–1496.
—— (1996) ‘Competition, innovation, and increasing returns’, Working Paper 96–10, Danish Research Unit of Industrial Dynamics.
—— (1997) ‘Economic analysis, public policy, and the software industry’, Working Paper 97–4, Danish Research Unit of Industrial Dynamics.
—— (1998a) ‘Some principles of economic organisation’, in this volume.
—— (1988b) ‘What can an economist learn from managing a business?’, in P.E. Earl and S. Don (eds) Economic Knowledge and Economic Coordination: Essays in Honour of Brian J. Loasby, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
—— (forthcoming) ‘Autobiographical Introduction,’ in N.J. Foss (ed) The Economics of Imperfect Knowledge: Collected Papers by G.B. Richardson, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
REFERENCES
Coase, R. H. (1960) ‘The problem of social cost’, Journal of Law and Economics 3: 1–44.
—— (1988) The Firm, the Market, and the Law, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hayek, F. A. von (1945) ‘The use of knowledge in society’, American Economic Review 35: 519–30; reprinted in Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.
—— (1946) ‘The meaning of competition’; reprinted in Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.
Kaldor, N. (1972) ‘The irrelevance of equilibrium economies’, Economic Journal 82: 1237–55.
Langlois, R. N. (ed.) (1986) Economics as a Process: Essays in the New Institutional Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Loasby, B. J. (1989) The Mind and Method of the Economist, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Marshall, A. (1923) Industry and Trade, London: Macmillan.
Metcalfe, J. S. (1994) ‘Richardson, George B.’, in G. M. Hodgson, W. J. Samuels and M. R. Tool (eds) (1994) The Elgar Companion to Institutional and Evolutionary Economics, L–Z, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Penrose, E. T. (1959) The Theory of the Growth of the Firm, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Richardson, G. B. (1993) Letter to Nicolai Foss, 14 May.
Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sraffa, P. (1926) ‘The laws of return under competitive conditions’, Economic Journal 36: 535–50.