Sequence of Topics.

The structure of production.

• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Glasgow edition, 1976, Book I, Chapters I-III.
• George Stigler, "The Division of Labor Is Limited by the Extent of the Market," Journal of Political Economy 59(3): 185-193 (1951).
• Axel Leijonhufvud, "Capitalism and the Factory System," in R. N. Langlois, ed., Economic as a Process: Essays in the New Institutional Economics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• Edward Ames and Nathan Rosenberg, "The Progressive Division and Specialization of Industries," The Journal of Development Studies 1(4): 363-383 (1965).
• Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Information and Organizations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, chapter 2.
• Richard N. Langlois, "Cognitive Comparative Advantage and the Organization of Work," Journal of Economic Psychology 24: 187-207 (2003).
• David H. Autor, Frank Levy, and Richard J. Murnane, “The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118(4): 1279–1333 (2003).
• David H. Autor, "Polanyi's Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth," National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series No. 20485 (2014).
• Willy Staley, "22 Hours in Balthazar," The New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2013.
• Video: "Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu."

 Transaction-cost economics: overview.

• Oliver E. Williamson, "Transaction Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractual Relations," Journal of Law and Economics 22(2): 233-261 (1979).
• Armen Alchian and Susan Woodward, "The Firm Is Dead; Long Live the Firm: A Review of Oliver E. Williamson's The Economic Institutions of Capitalism," Journal of Economic Literature 26(1): 65-79 (March 1988).
• Douglas W. Allen, “Transaction Costs,” in Boudewijn Bouckaert and Gerrit De Geest, eds., The Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, volume 1. Chelthenham, Edward Elgar, 2000, pp. 893-926..

 The Coasean approach.

• Ronald H. Coase, "The Nature of the Firm," Economica (N.S.) 4: 386-405 (November 1937).
• Ronald H. Coase, "The Nature of the Firm: Origin, Meaning, Influence," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 4(1), Spring 1988.
• Steven N. S. Cheung, "The Contractual Nature of the Firm," Journal of Law and Economics 26(1): 1-21 (April 1983).

 Moral hazard, monitoring, and measurement costs.

• Yoram Barzel, "Measurement Costs and the Organization of Markets," Journal of Law and Economics 25(1): 27-48 (April 1982).
• Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz, "Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review 62(5), December 1972.
• Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, "Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure," Journal of Financial Economics 3: 305-360, 1976.
• Bengt Holmstrom and Paul Milgrom, "Multi-Task Principal-Agent Analyses: Linear Contracts, Asset Ownership and Job Design," Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 7: 24-52 (1991).

Asset specificity.

• Benjamin Klein, Robert G. Crawford, and Armen Alchian, "Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process," Journal of Law and Economics 21(2): 297-326 (1978).
• Oliver E. Williamson, "The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach," The American Journal of Sociology 87(3): 548-577 (1981).
• Oliver E. Williamson, "Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange," The American Economic Review 73(4): 519-540 (1983).
• Benjamin Klein, "Vertical Integration as Organizational Ownership: The Fisher Body-General Motors Relationship Revisited," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 4(1): 199-213 (Spring 1988).
• Susan Helper, John Paul MacDuffie, and Charles Sabel, "Pragmatic Collaborations: Advancing Knowledge while Controlling Opportunism," Industrial and Corporate Change 9(3): 443-488 (2000).
• Symposium on the General Motors-Fisher Body case, Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 43, No. 1, April 2000.
• Benjamin Klein, "The Economic Lessons of Fisher Body-General Motors," International Journal of the Economics of Business 14(1): 1-36 (February 2007).
• Brooks, Richard R. W., "The Holdup Game," in Claude Ménard and Elodie Bertrand, eds., The Elgar Companion to Ronald H. Coase. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 131-147 (2016).

Property rights theory (old and new).

• Armen Alchian, “Some Economics of Property Rights,” Il Politico 30(4): 816-829 (1965).
• Harold Demsetz, “Toward a Theory of Property Rights,” American Economic Review 57(2): 347‑359 (1967).
• James M. Buchanan and Yong J. Yoon, "Symmetric Tragedies: Commons and Anticommons," Journal of Law and Economics 43(1): 1-13.(April 2000).
• Oliver D. Hart, "An Economist's Perspective on the Theory of the Firm," Columbia Law Review 89(7): 1757-1774 (1989).
• Harold Demsetz,. "Review of Oliver Hart, Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," Journal of Political Economy 106: 446-452 (1998).
• Kirsten Foss and Nicolai J. Foss, "Assets, Attributes, and Ownership," International Journal of the Economics of Business 8: 19-37 (2001).
• Ugo Pagano, "Public Markets, Private Orderings and Corporate Governance," International Review of Law and Economics 20 453-477 (2000).

Summary (so far) and prospect.

• Robert Gibbons, “Four formal(izable) theories of the firm?” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 58:  200–245 (2005).
• Paul Milgrom and John Roberts,"Bargaining Costs, Influence Costs, and the Organization of Economic Activity," in James E. Alt and Kenneth A. Shepsle, eds., Perspectives on Positive Political Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 57-89( 1990).

Dispersed knowledge and ownership.

• F. A. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," American Economic Review 35(4): 519-530 (1945).
• Michael C. Jensen and William H. Meckling, "Specific and General Knowledge, and Organizational Structure," in Lars Werin and Hans Wijkander, eds., Contract Economics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992, pages 251-74 and in Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Fall 1995.
• Yoram Barzel, "The Entrepreneur's Reward for Self-Policing," Economic Inquiry 25: 103-116 (1987).
• Eugene F. Fama and Michael Jensen, "The Separation of Ownership and Control," Journal of Law and Economics 26(2): 301-27 (June 1983).
• Eugene F. Fama and Michael Jensen, "Agency Problems and Residual Claims," Journal of Law and Economics 26(2): 327-50 (June 1983).
• Henry Hansmann, "Ownership of the Firm," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 4(2): 267-304 (Fall 1988).
• Henry Hansmann, The Ownership of Enterprise. Cambridge: the Belknap Press, 1996.

 Production costs redux: Economic capabilities.

• Sidney G. Winter, "On Coase, Competence, and the Corporation," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 4(1): 163-180 (Spring 1988).
• Richard N. Langlois and Nicolai J. Foss, "Capabilities and Governance: the Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization" Kyklos 52(2): 201-218 (1999).
• Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge: the Belknap Press, 1982, chapters 4 and 5.
• Edith Penrose, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959. (Oxford edition, 1995.)
• G. B. Richardson, "The Organisation of Industry," Economic Journal 82(327): 883-896 (1972).
• David J. Teece, "Economies of Scope and the Scope of the Enterprise," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 1(3): 223 (1980).
• David J. Teece, "Profiting from Technological Innovation: Implications for Integration, Collaboration, Licensing, and Public Policy," Research Policy 15: 285-305 (December 1986).
• David J. Teece, Gary Pisano, and Amy Shuen, "Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management," Strategic Management Journal 18(7): 509-533 (August 1997).

Organization and economic change.

• Armen Alchian, "Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory," Journal of Political Economy 58(3): 211-221 (1950).
• Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942, pp. 63-106.
• Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter, "Evolutionary Theorizing in Economics," The Journal of Economic Perspectives 16(2): 23-46 (Spring 2002).
• Richard N. Langlois, "Transaction-Cost Economics in Real Time," Industrial and Corporate Change 1(1): 99-127 (1992).
• Richard N. Langlois, “The Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm and the Theory of the Entrepreneurial Firm," Journal of Management Studies 44(7): 1107-1124 (November 2007).

 Modular systems and standards.

• Paul A. David, "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY," American Economic Review 75(2): 332-337 (1985).
• S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, "The Fable of the Keys," Journal of Law and Economics 33(1): 1-25 (April 1990).
• S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, "Path-dependence, Lock-in, and History," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 11: 205-226 (1995).
• Richard N. Langlois, "Modularity in Technology and Organization," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 49: 19-37 (2002).
• Rebecca M. Henderson and Kim B. Clark, "Architectural Innovation: the Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms," Administrative Science Quarterly 35: 9 (March 1990).
• Richard N. Langlois and Paul L. Robertson, "Networks and Innovation in a Modular System: Lessons from the Microcomputer and Stereo Component Industries," Research Policy 21(4): 297-313 (1992).
• Carliss Y. Baldwin, "Where Do Transactions Come from?" Industrial and Corporate Change 17(1): 155–195 (2008).
• Richard N. Langlois, “The Secret Life of Mundane Transaction Costs,” Organization Studies 27(9): 1389-1410 (2006).

The old economy and the new economy.

• Alfred D. Chandler, "Organizational Capabilities and the Economic History of the Industrial Enterprise," Journal of Economic Perspectives 6(3): 79-100 (1992).
• Allyn A. Young, "Increasing Returns and Economic Progress," The Economic Journal 38 (Dec. 1928), pp. 527-542..
• Richard N. Langlois, "The Vanishing Hand: The Changing Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism," Industrial and Corporate Change, 12(2): 351-385 (April 2003).
• Richard N. Langlois, "Chandler in a Larger Frame: Markets, Transaction Costs, and Organizational Form in History," Enterprise and Society 5(3): 355-375 (September 2004).

Business groups.

• Randall Morck, "The Riddle of the Great Pyramids," in Asli M. Colpan, Takashi Hikino and James R. Lincoln, eds., Oxford Handbook of Business Groups. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Richard N. Langlois, "Business Groups and the Natural State," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 88: 14-26 (April 2013).