In 1984, I set out to investigate whether my demand for institutional analysis had created its own supply, whether the thesis of institution-free eco… - Þráinn Eggertsson

The concept of state ownership is particularly ambiguous. In a democratic society, state property may have some of the characteristics of common property; for instance, the citizens usually do not have the right to sell their individual titles to public property, whereas under dictatorship, state ownership can approach the system of private property with the economy resembling a huge corporation.

North's (1979) theory of the state,... is based on the modern theory of the firm... and emphasizes how transaction costs and agency problems affect political behavior and the structure of property rights.

Adam Smith began his Wealth of Nations with an examination of the internal works of a pin factory, but he soon turned his attention to other things: the coordination of a market system and the economics of growth and development. For more than a century and a half following the publication of Smith's masterpiece, the nature and internal organization of the firm received little attention in mainstream economic theory.