Transaction costs within the firm: influence costs (Milgrom)

Let's take a closer look at what transaction costs arise within the firm (we called them managerial or bureaucratic costs). Two interrelated problems arise within the firm: coordination and motivational.

The essence of the coordination problem is to coordinate the division of labor within the firm. It is necessary to determine what and how should be done and who should do it. The survival and success of an organization depends on the ability to coordinate the actions of a large number of people and groups, develop a realistic plan and direct the actions of people to implement it. It is necessary to decide who makes the decisions, which decisions should be made centrally and which should be decentralized; what information should be passed up to those who make decisions, and what should be sent down to those who participate in the implementation of the plan, i.e. organize a communication system within the company. Therefore, coordination costs consist of the following components:

• management costs (distribution of tasks);
• costs of collecting and processing information;
• communication costs (this includes the loss of time from delaying information in the course of communication; costs caused by inaccurate or insufficient information, information concealment).

The motivational problem is related to the coordination problem, it affects the solution of coordination problems. Essence of mochi

The main problem is to ensure that employees are willing to complete tasks, to interest them in accurately and accurately providing the information necessary for the development of plans. Workers may have incentives to provide incorrect private information so that higher authorities make decisions that are beneficial to these workers. To solve the motivational problem and prevent the opportunistic behavior of employees, complex and expensive structures appear in firms, whose tasks include controlling the behavior of employees, establishing penalties - sanctions, fines. Part of the administrative apparatus is occupied exclusively with cutting the costs of opportunistic behavior. So, the costs arising in connection with the motivational problem include the following components:

• losses from shirking employees;
• the costs of measuring the contribution of individual workers;
• control costs of employees.

Trying to define the boundaries of the firm and answer the question of the possibility of overcoming one of the shortcomings of the firm as a mechanism for coordinating people's activities, which is associated with the lack of strong economic incentives within the firm that are characteristic of the market mechanism, the American scientist P. Milgrom proposed the idea of ​​"influence costs" ( influence costs). He suggested that bureaucratic rules are a rational way to restrain activities that are harmful to the organization, aimed at influencing management in order to obtain certain benefits from it ( influence activity).

Milgrom, like Williamson, tried to answer the question of whether the firm could be operated by independent divisions and coordinated by a mechanism with strong incentives, similar to the market, and the central management of the firm would implement a policy of selective intervention. where there was a need to correct the market mechanism. Like Williamson, Milgrom gives a negative answer to this question: such a policy of selective intervention is impossible due to the fact that there is a politicization of the internal life of the firm and vigorous activity begins to influence management.

Activities aimed at influencing management in order to obtain certain benefits from it ( influence activity) always occurs in organizations when organizational decisions affect the distribution of wealth or other benefits among members of the organization or groups within the organization.

The more authority the leadership has, the more intense the attempts of subordinates, pursuing their own selfish goals, to influence it can become. Why should management pay attention to these attempts to influence them on the part of subordinates?

First, the manager must evaluate the work in order to make the right decisions about the match between the skills of the employee and the work assigned to him. He must pay attention to signals about the ability of workers. As a result, employees who are not shy about means to achieve goals can direct their efforts to prove their abilities in less productive ways: flattery, flattering superiors, personal favors, creating alliances with other employees. The market, of course, is also subject to a similar disadvantage: career considerations can distort behavior in any situation where some evaluation of economic agents is made (for example, in the managerial labor market, which we will discuss below). But within the firm, the worker is watched more closely, and the rewards from the worker's signals of value are higher. In the market, it is more difficult to set goals for such influencer activities, so the losses from these activities within the firm will be more significant.

Secondly, the leader may even like such activity, since he may be offered a bribe. Of course, this is not a bribe in the form of a certain amount of money, it manifests itself in the form of personal services, flattery. Mutual exchange increases with time and with the intensity of contacts. The owner of the company does not need to worry about bribes of this kind from the employee. If he accepts personal favors, then it will be just a mutually beneficial exchange. But when the person exercising control does not bear all the financial consequences of his actions, then such an exchange may become redundant.

The costs of this activity are called influence costs. Any structures with elements of centralized decision-making are subject to these costs. The following components of influence costs can be distinguished:

• loss of efficiency due to the misrepresentation by agents of the information they provide to higher authorities, thus trying to influence the decisions of management; agents may also hide information in an attempt to become irreplaceable;
• the time and effort that is wasted trying to influence management decisions in their favor;
• the firm's costs of preventing the politicization of its internal life and reducing the costs of influence.

To prevent or limit the politicization of internal life and the growth of the costs of influence of the firm:

• – hide information (for example, wages of employees are transferred to bank card and they don't know about the magnitude wages their colleagues);
• - smooth out differences in wages;
• establish a strong relationship between salary, work experience and tasks performed;

introduce "objective" criteria for promotion (age or education of employees);

• – establish rigidly formalized decision-making procedures;
• - create special regulatory bodies;
• - limit communication between managers and lower-level employees.

All these restrictions are associated with direct costs, but they also have a negative indirect effect - they lead to a decrease in efficiency due to the weakening of incentives. For example, the restriction of communication between the manager and employees of a lower level, although it reduces the opportunities for politicking and supplying management with strategic information, leads to the fact that some of the information important for management does not reach him.

Rules and bureaucratic restrictions may prevent activities that are exceptional. Funding requests must be approved by many authorities before they reach the final decision maker, so the chances of an unfamiliar and innovative project being accepted are greatly reduced. In addition, managers at various levels will protect their investments in specific human capital, and new products and production methods can be a potential threat to their position as leaders.

When two organizations merge into one, the cost of influence increases dramatically. Employees in each division will try to influence top management to transfer resources to this new division (investment, top talent). Many acquisitions fail because of influence costs. An example is the 1980 takeover by Tenneco Inc. company "Houston Oil and Minerals Corporation", which was engaged in the exploration, development of deposits and production of oil and other minerals. Prior to the takeover, Houston had been quite successful and aggressive, and Tenneco wanted to keep the company's entrepreneurial style. In the hope of retaining Houston's skilled workforce, Tenneco offered her a special compensation system that she did not use for her employees.

However, difficulties arose in the implementation of this plan, and during the year former company Houston left most of the staff. The reason for this was the bureaucratic difficulties that arose in obtaining the package of remuneration assigned to him, and bureaucratic restrictions on the amount of these payments. It proved impossible to maintain a distinct status for the new unit, and a differentiated approach to remuneration could not be implemented. The remuneration policy pursued with respect to the former Houston company came into conflict with Tenneco's desire to follow a policy of fair wages, applying uniform remuneration standards to all employees of the company. This policy of encouraging the new division could be devastating for Tenneco, it would lead to other divisions trying to get their hands on a larger share of the funds, an increase in the number of employee complaints, i.e. there would be a significant increase in the costs that Milgrom calls the costs of influence

14. Into a number transaction costs not included:

1. Costs of choosing partners in the transaction

2. The cost of negotiating

4. Transportation costs

5. Costs of not executing a transaction properly or avoiding them

Sample answer: 4

15. supreme body joint stock company is:

1. Meeting of shareholders

2. CEO

3. Board of Directors ( Supervisory Board)

4. Executive body

5. All the listed bodies jointly solve all issues.

Sample answer: 1.

16. The rights of an ordinary shareholder do not include:

1. Receiving a dividend

3. Familiarization with the company's documentation

4. Redemption of shares at par value on demand

5. All of the listed rights are characteristic of an ordinary share

Sample answer: 4

17. In joint stock company:

1. Ownership and management are separated

2. The only owner is the board of directors

3. Management is in the hands of shareholders

4. No need to publish business results

5. All of the above is wrong

Sample answer: 1

In what sectors in a market economy most often there is state ownership?

1. In the production of shoes and clothing

2. In retail

3. In infrastructure industries

4. In agriculture

5. In production building materials

Sample answer: 3

20. The functions of the exchange are all except:

1. accumulation of capital,

2. ensuring intersectoral capital flows,

3. creation of an effective owner,

4. information support.

Sample answer: 3

21. Hierarchy is:

Sample answer: 2

22. The characteristics of spontaneous order include everything except:

1. coordination of actions through the market,

2. subordination of individual actions of individual participants to the orders of the center,

3. making decisions based on your own motives and available information,

4. submission of their actions to information about prices.

Sample answer: 2

23. The boundaries of the firm's efficiency are determined by the growth of transaction costs associated with:

1. the phenomenon of loss of control,

2. the effect of information distortion,

3. growth of accounting costs,

4. weakening of motivation,

5. all of the above is correct.

Concept and meaning of transaction.

Transaction - human activity in the form of alienation and appropriation of property rights and freedoms accepted in society, which are carried out in the process of planning, monitoring the fulfillment of promises, and also adapting to unforeseen circumstances.

Freedom rights are considered as a separate category. In this case, the legal point of view is used. This is due to the fact that the rights of liberty do not belong to the category of property rights in the legal sense, even if one goes beyond the continental legal tradition and takes into account the peculiarities of customary law. At the same time, within the framework of the new institutional economic theory, freedom rights may well be considered as a subspecies of property rights. This is due to the emphasis on incentives in determining the value of rights to explain the actions of economic agents and the interaction between them about limited resources.

There is another aspect of the definition of transaction. Institutions ensure the extension of the will of the individual beyond the area in which he can influence the environment directly by his actions, that is, beyond the scope of physical control. Such a spread is transactions as opposed to individual action as such (stock) or exchange of goods.

When a transaction is considered, the constraints, social background, or context in which they (actions) are considered must be explicitly defined. Thus, the transaction turns out to be an action posited by the interaction between people.

In economic theory, the interaction between people is considered against the background of such key assumptions as limited resources, following one's own interests. That is why the transaction contains in implicit form three moments that are simultaneously a reflection of three types social relations: conflict, dependence and order16. As a first approximation conflict can be defined as a mutual exclusion relationship over the use of a limited resource. Interdependence- an attitude that reflects a mutual understanding of the opportunities for improving well-being through interaction. Order- the relation by means of which not only the total gain is determined, but also its distribution among the interested parties.

The proposed definition of a transaction makes it possible to analyze various forms of economic activity within the same system of concepts. Thus, this definition is an element of general economic theory from the point of view of the possibilities of analyzing alternative and/or complementary economic systems.

The definition of a transaction and comments on it make it possible to formulate a sequence of further presentation. First, consider the types of transactions. Secondly, to find out what causes the coexistence of different types of transactions and the process of replacing one of their types with another.

Types of transactions. The value of the classification of transactions is that it shows the possibilities comparative analysis discrete institutional alternatives that mediate exchanges between economic agents. Discrete institutional alternatives are a set of systemically closed (indivisible, complementary) sets of rules that mediate interaction between people over limited goods.

One of the options for classifying transactions was proposed by J. Commons. He distinguished three types of transactions: trading, rationing and management17. As noted above, in this section we will deal only with pure types of transactions.

In a trade transaction for the implementation of the actual alienation and appropriation of property rights and freedoms, the mutual consent of the parties is necessary, based on the economic interest of each of them in accordance with the relative bargaining power, legal status, etc. value in a thing no less than that which the thing at his disposal has for him.

A trade transaction is the only form in which it is possible to comply with the conditions of symmetry of legal relations between counterparties.

Examples of transaction transactions can be actions in the labor market of an employee and an employer (or their unions), the behavior of legislators in the political market, the actions of a creditor and a borrower in the market of temporarily free Money. Each of the parties independently accepts the final

16Commons John R. (1931), Institutional Economics, 21 american economic review, 656.

a positive decision to participate in the exchange, although the latter may be asymmetrical if, say, scattered entrepreneurs are opposed by a strong union, or vice versa. From this point of view, the transaction is carried out between legally equal, but not necessarily equal in negotiating power, de facto, parties.

However, in any case, the essence of a trade transaction is the exchange of property rights on the basis of a voluntary agreement between the exchanging parties, which is a consequence of the symmetry of legal relations in which these economic agents find themselves. A legislator can vote in favor of a project in which his interests are relatively weakly expressed in exchange for similar support from another legislator of a project in which the former is interested. Thus, from the point of view of modern economic theory, logrolling, the essence of which is the support of one bill in exchange for the support of another, is one of the forms of trade transactions in the political market.

In the transaction of control the key is the relationship of control-subordination, which involves such interaction between people when the right to make decisions belongs to only one party (due to delegation, usurpation, acquisition, etc.). This type of transaction exists in intra-company relations, in bureaucratic organizations, and more broadly in intra-hierarchical relations. Management transactions exist due to the fact that the right to make a decision (respectively, the right to freedom, according to J. Commons) is exchanged for income, the expected utility of which must exceed that which corresponds to the market wage rate in the market. In connection with this condition, employment contracts work force differ radically from other voluntary contracts, making it necessary to single out freedom as a special right.

Typical examples of management transactions are the behavior of a slave and a slave owner, a worker and a master, a boss and a subordinate in accordance with formal rules. In a management transaction, behavior is clearly asymmetric, which is a consequence of the asymmetry of the legal status of the parties and, accordingly, the asymmetry of legal relations. The objects of the transaction are the rights to exchanged goods. The object of the management transaction is the behavior of one of the parties to the legal relationship.

If the transaction corresponds to its concept, the slave owner, master or boss gives commands, thereby directly expressing his will, and slaves, workers or subordinates carry them out regardless of whether this coincides with their interests or not. Team- unilateral limitation of the set of permissible actions that slaves, workers and subordinates, etc. can take.

In this case, the differences between the types of commands are not significant. In terms of the problem of choice, this means that the procedure for evaluating alternatives as a means of their selection is superseded for the controlled by restrictions that leave only one alternative available. At least, this is how the simplest version of a pure control transaction can be represented. In turn, the effectiveness of restrictions is due to the effectiveness of the existing system of sanctioning behavior, which determines not only the structure of rewards and penalties, but also their intensity. Uncertainty

does not allow to absolutely precisely specify the actions of a person, as well as to model for him the mental procedures for their implementation, that is, to completely "program" him. And from this point of view, a real transaction is a combination of elements of pure types of transactions.

In the rationing transaction the asymmetry of the legal status of the parties remains, but the place of the managing party is occupied by a collective body that performs the function of specifying rights. In particular, the drawing up of a company's budget by the board of directors, as well as the federal budget by the government, and the approval by a representative body of an arbitral tribunal's decision on a dispute arising between actors through which wealth is distributed, are transactions of rationing. One side (board of directors, court) determines the rights of the other (heads of departments, plaintiff and defendant).

At the same time, there are possible appeals from one side to the other, which outwardly may resemble negotiations: to prove the possibility of appropriation or the need to alienate the good, it is necessary to provide sufficient grounds. However, only one party has the exclusive (formally) right to make the final decision. The rationing subject does not necessarily have the ability to determine the actions of the rationed one (as happens in the control transaction).

In contrast to the transaction of governance, an active role in the realization of the rights of freedoms is played by applicants for an appropriate share of wealth. In contrast to the transaction of a transaction, negotiations are carried out in the form of putting forward arguments, filing a petition, or eloquence. Thus, the order of action in the transactions of management and rationing of each of the parties determines the features of the result obtained.

The same operations can be mediated by different types of transactions, depending on the rules that regulate the relationship between economic agents. So, for example, if there are no restrictions on the level of interest charged by commercial banks, then the provision and receipt of credit are, on both sides, predominantly a transaction transaction. Moreover, if a sufficiently large number of economic agents act on the supply and demand side, then the resulting price will be perceived by each of them as something external.

If the state sets the maximum level of the interest rate and it turns out to be effective (below the potentially equilibrium one), then the losses in the bank's money income can be compensated by the ability to impose its will in decision-making, that is, to use a management transaction or to establish rules that determine the rights of one or other category of borrowers. Thus, elements of the transaction of rationing (or control) are “interspersed” into a transaction that, at first glance, is a transaction of a transaction.

When analyzing the relationship between a slave and a slave owner, a boss and a subordinate, the transaction of control is supplemented by the transaction of a deal, which allows us to speak about the existence of a contract, albeit implicit. In essence, on

18 Ibid., 648-654.

In this approach to the analysis of intra-hierarchical relations within the framework of a coercively directed (centrally controlled) economy, the concept of an administrative market, the economy of agreements, was built, which was used to explain the organization of exchange within the economic system, formally characterized by a strictly centralized decision-making procedure.

Determining the content of a transaction, clarifying its relationship with the rules as the key components of an institution, allows us to present one of the most interesting problems of modern economic theory - the problem of transaction costs.

The considered types of transactions make it possible to distinguish between the concept of "transaction" and "exchange of goods". The key to distinguishing between these two concepts is an abstraction from the space and real time in which business processes take place. Net exchange is instantaneous and has no space-time component.

Strictly speaking, only a trade transaction is "similar" to an exchange of goods. The difference between a trade transaction and an exchange of goods becomes more obvious if they are separated not only in time (according to the principle of "legal control - future physical control"), but also in terms of the nature of reproducibility. If a trade transaction is the appropriation of some rights through the alienation of others, then the exchange involves a transaction in physical terms, that is, the movement of goods, the significance of which is expressed in the value of the rights to them. Futures transactions are the purest example of a transaction, in contrast to an exchange, when only the right to purchase or sell a commodity in the future is sold and bought, although the latter may not yet exist, for example, grain (if the transaction is concluded in the spring of N-ro of the year for the supply of the corresponding consignment of grain harvest N-ro of the year in autumn at a predetermined price).

When distinguishing between the exchange of goods and transactions, the double meaning of the concept of "commodity", which was put into it by J. Commons19 - technological and proprietary (proprietary) can also be used. In accordance with common sense, based on the direct perception of the interaction between economic agents, only a certain amount of goods X is transferred from hand to hand in exchange for a certain amount of money M. Meanwhile, the most important moment of this process is double alienation and appropriation of property rights. Thus, strictly speaking, it is not goods that are offered for purchase and sale of property rights, but not directly objects of property rights. Accordingly, the price of a good reflects not only its value based on physical characteristics, but also the value associated with a set of alienated and appropriated rights. The formulated approach to the distinction between a trade transaction and the exchange of goods corresponds to the concept of a Buchanan commodity, which is defined as a pair consisting of an “ordinary” commodity (good) and a certain contract form its purchase or sale.

19Commons, John R. (1950), The Economics and Collective Action, N.Y.: Macmillan, 44.

20Tambovtsev V.L. (2001a), Institutional Market as a Mechanism for Institutional Change// Social Sciences and Modernity, No. 5, p.34.

2.2. Transaction costs

The possibility of extracting benefits from the exchange is affected not only by the total amount of transaction costs, but also by the distribution of their burden among the participants in the exchange. The efficiency of resource allocation depends not only on the overall level of transaction costs and distribution among interested parties, but also on the structure determined by the directions of potential and real agreements between economic agents.

Transaction costs are not the only component of production costs. Thus, it is necessary to determine the relationship between transaction and transformation costs.

Transaction costs: definition, conditions of occurrence, meaning. The first, most general definition that could be given is based on the definition of a transaction:

transaction costs are the value of resources (money, time, labor, etc.) spent on planning, adaptation and ensuring control over the fulfillment of obligations assumed by individuals in the process of alienation and appropriation of property rights and freedoms accepted in society.

Production costs, in accordance with the new institutional economic theory, consist of two parts - transformation costs associated with a change or reproduction of the physical characteristics of goods, and transaction costs, reflecting the change or reproduction of "legal", and in more general plan- institutional, characteristics.

If we imagine the economy as a life support system, then transaction costs can be considered as operating costs. economic system. Defining the content of the concept of "transaction costs" sometimes use the analogy proposed by Kenneth Arrow: transaction costs in the economic system are similar to the phenomenon of friction in the world of physical objects. This analogy allows us to talk about the general distribution of transaction costs.

The concept of transaction costs is of key importance in the new institutional theory, since institutions are explained not through the prism of a conflict of class interests, but in terms of opportunities to save on transaction costs.

To explain the phenomenon of transaction costs, two points are most significant: the discrepancy between the economic interests of interacting agents and the phenomenon of uncertainty. Uncertainty is determined not only through the fragmentation (and, as a rule, distortion) of information available to individuals, but also through the limited possibilities for its processing that they (agents) have.

Given the presence of two aspects in explaining transaction costs, they can be interpreted as the costs of coordinating the activities of economic agents and removing the distribution conflict between them. Since coordination is a key component of any organization, without taking into account transaction costs (explicitly or implicitly), economic analysis would be unproductive.

The significance of transaction cost analysis will become clearer if we offer a historical illustration given by D. North:

“Trade, as theory teaches us international trade, always promised benefits, but at the same time there were obstacles that prevented this benefit from being realized. Moreover, if the only obstacle to the development of trade were transport costs, then there would be an inverse relationship between transport costs, on the one hand, and trade, exchange, and the welfare of states, on the other. But remember that already at the dawn of our era, as the experience of the Roman Empire of the 1st-2nd centuries shows, it was possible to cover vast territories with trade relations, despite all the transport costs of that time, and with the decline of the Roman Empire, trade fell into decline, and along with it, in all likelihood, decreased the well-being of society and individual social groups. And the reason was not that transport costs rose, but that with the expansion of the trading region, transaction costs rose, and integral political systems capable of effectively maintaining law and order and law enforcement disappeared.

The absence of a direct link between efficient institutions and their existence, which is explained by transaction costs, is an important direction in the study of the evolution of institutions. It becomes possible to explain evolution as changes that depend both on the trajectory of the previous development and on the imperfection of the mechanism. feedback and selection, through which the decision-makers learn, and the external environment determines the survival, development of the most “successful”, or rather, the most adapted, which, in turn, determine the course of further development.

Such an interpretation of transaction costs makes it possible to reveal the relationship between them and institutions, and through them, between institutions and welfare. The dual basis of transaction costs is due, on the one hand, to the problem of coordination due to the existence of uncertainty, and, on the other hand, to the problem of distributional conflict due to conflicting interests of economic agents in a world of limited resources. This circumstance indicates the possibility of an ambiguous relationship between them and institutions, since the interests of one group may consist, firstly, in increasing the level of uncertainty for others, and secondly, in obtaining an advantage in strength at the expense of others. The latter allows increasing the welfare of this group. without increasing the size of the product.

If transaction costs were zero, then, following the premises of the new institutional (and neoclassical) theory, resources were distributed

21 North D. (1993a), Institutions and Economic Growth: A Historical Introduction// THESIS, vol. 1, no. 2, p.70.

and would be used where they are most valuable (apart from the income effect) regardless of the initial distribution of property rights among economic agents. In accordance with the premise of zero transaction costs, the interpreters of R. Coase formulated a theorem that bears his name. An abbreviated version can be presented in following form: with zero transaction costs and income effect, as well as exogenous prices in relation to the actions of economic agents, the initial distribution of property rights does not affect the efficiency of their final allocation.

This is why, in neoclassical economics, institutions do not matter in terms of the efficiency (Pareto-optimality) of the final allocation of resources. As a comment to this definition It should be emphasized that R. Coase himself never spoke about the model of the world with zero transaction costs in a positive way. The term "Cose world" is misleading because it implies a model with zero transaction costs.

The first work of R. Coase, which received worldwide recognition a few decades later - "The Nature of the Firm" (1937) is based precisely on the premise of non-zero transaction costs. The formulated theorem is significant in the sense that it indirectly shows that positive transaction costs matter for various options for the initial distribution of property rights from the point of view of the efficiency of the final allocation of resources.

Given this circumstance, firstly, we get the opportunity to explain the existence of various regimes of property rights (private, state, communal, free access) from a functional point of view, and not only from a moral and ethical one, which is both independent and derived from functional basis value. Second, accounting for transaction costs helps explain the comparative efficiency various ways internalization of externalities as a way to fully take into account in the decision-making process the costs and benefits arising from their (decisions) implementation. Thirdly, it becomes possible to explain the occurrence and limits of distribution various forms institutional arrangements, or institutional arrangements. Fourth, the analysis of transaction costs is also important in the interpretation of institutional transformation, which is expressed, in particular, in the restructuring of property rights regimes, for example, in the transition from free access to private, state or communal property, changing the rules that form the institutional environment. In addition, with the help of this concept, it is possible to determine the conditions for the emergence and the relationship between various institutional agreements in economic history.

Transaction and transformation costs. Transaction costs are an element of production costs along with transformation costs, which are the object of analysis in the traditional

onnoy neoclassical theory22.

There is not only complementarity between transaction and transformation costs, but also their substitutability. The proposed approach makes it possible to explain the existence of forms of economic activity or interaction between economic agents that do not ensure the minimization of average transformation costs in the long term (if we are talking about a competitive mode of functioning of the economic system), and vice versa.

Let's consider this issue in more detail. It is known that limited goods have a set of characteristics that can be divided into two groups: physical and legal. The first group includes properties such as size, shape, taste, color, smell, chemical composition, weight, location in space and time. The second group includes the powers that make up the property rights.

Two types of characteristics of goods correspond to two functions: transformational and transactional, which allow you to create and change them. A function is called transformational if its implementation is aimed at changing the physical properties of a thing. A function is considered transactional if the characteristics of a thing related to property rights change. Thus, the resources associated with the implementation of the transformational function form elements of transformational costs, and those resources, the use of which determines the change legal characteristics things form the transactional component of production costs.

A software or computer firm raises its transformation costs by making its products compatible with competitors' products. However, this significantly reduces transaction costs, since it makes it unnecessary for buyers to carry out specific investments with the corresponding classical problem of quasi-rent dilution due to the opportunistic behavior of ex post producers. As a result of the reduction in transaction costs, the market capacity expands, which allows the firm to compensate for the growth in transformation costs.

Another example is based on a comparison of two types of exchange: personalized and impersonal. As part of a personalized exchange, due to the high degree of

22 It should be noted that the definition of costs as transactional or transformational is not invariant with respect to the chosen reference point. For example, the buyer of an apartment, paying for the services of a real estate company, bears transaction costs. They are the income of the real estate company. At the same time, real estate agents provide transformational services for the firm, which is reflected in the emergence of transformational costs. Thus, if we assume that this firm operates in a competitive environment, in the long run its economic profit is equal to zero, respectively, transformation costs are equal in magnitude to transaction costs. However, the problem is complicated by the fact that the real estate company itself also bears transaction costs by acquiring transaction services, in particular, to ensure the security of its activities. Expenses under this item turn out to be income of organizations providing security entrepreneurial activity and protection of contracts. This chain can be continued. Here we also come across well known issue double counting, which requires determining the market value of the final transaction services.

no repeatability of transactions with the same participants, fraud, fraud, theft, violation of obligations assumed are either absent or poorly represented. Thus, direct, explicit transaction costs in such an exchange are low. At the same time, personalized exchange is possible within very narrow limits, which turns out to be an obstacle to the division of labor and specialization. In turn, specialization is a condition for reducing transformation costs. Consequently, under the conditions of personalized exchange, the total costs are high due to transformational costs. At the same time, impersonal exchange allows economic agents to produce at low transformation costs through a radical expansion of the scale of specialization. However, as the one-move prisoner's dilemma shows, the conditions of which are quite consistent with the conditions of a depersonalized exchange, an equilibrium set of strategies will involve mutual deceit, fraud, falsification of goods, unscrupulousness, which in some cases requires the intervention of a third party.

It is the structure and dynamics of transaction costs (together with transformation costs and technology) that determine the forms of organization of economic activity, the content and nature of real transactions. This circumstance makes it possible to formulate a hypothesis according to which not only technology but also institutions are the source of economic growth.

The properties of existing institutions strongly influence the characteristics of economic outcomes, as evidenced by studies showing that countries with high quality institutions were better off than countries with higher macroeconomic policy quality and larger margins. human capital but low quality institutions.

It is often assumed that changes in technology affect the level of transformation costs, while institutional changes lead to an increase or decrease in transaction costs. However, there are at least two more forms of dependence that have been left out of the attention of researchers of the problem of transaction costs. Firstly, the impact of changes in technology on the level of transaction costs and, secondly, the impact of institutional changes on transformational costs. The inclusion of these dependencies in the analysis makes it possible to overcome the limitations of the naive version of the theory, according to which, in a given state of technology, institutions are chosen that ensure the minimization of transaction costs. At the same time, this approach allows us to answer the question: do technological changes that reduce transformation costs really lead to an increase in transaction costs and adapt to institutional changes?

According to K. Arrow, in the price system, transaction costs drive a wedge between the prices of sellers and buyers' prices and thereby lead to losses, causing damage to public welfare from the point of view of traditional economic theory. From this perspective, transaction costs act like a tax. However, the distribution of the burden of transaction costs largely depends on the effectiveness of the rival's strategic behavior.

teasing sides. At the same time, taxes are sometimes included as one of the elements in transaction costs. In particular, this is possible if we assume that taxes are a payment for transaction services rendered by the state in the specification and protection of property rights.

Thus, transaction costs are an obstacle to mutually beneficial exchange. In this regard, the question arises about the means that can reduce the level of transaction costs and ensure their distribution in such a way that voluntary exchange becomes possible. The variety of transaction costs also determines the variety of means to reduce these costs.

Opportunities for mutually beneficial exchange under conditions of positive transaction costs. In the previous paragraph, transaction costs were considered as an obstacle to mutually beneficial exchange, the realization of comparative advantages through specialization. In this section, we will show that for the implementation of a voluntary mutually beneficial exchange and an explanation of its scale, not only the absolute value of transaction costs, but also their distribution among the interested parties, is important. The analysis of this issue will be carried out on the basis of determining the conditions and results of a mutually beneficial exchange.

Recall that such an exchange is considered mutually beneficial, in which both parties have the opportunity to increase their well-being. In the framework of the Edgeworth box model, this is expressed in the transition to a higher indifference curve compared to the one that corresponds to the initial stock of goods for each of the participants in the exchange. Benefits from the exchange can be represented not only in the form of a change in the level of utility, but also in the form of the amount of one of the benefits, which corresponds to the difference between two levels of utility: corresponding to the initial distribution of benefits and the level that reflects the results of the exchange. We use the idea of ​​the possibility of expressing the benefit from the exchange in the form of the quantity of a particular commodity or composite commodity (money), assuming that the value of the gain for two individuals A and B is constant, does not change23 depending on the structure of the initial distribution of the stock of goods and is equal to: R = Ra + Re- These quantities of goods correspond to maximum amount, which the exchange participants are willing to pay for its implementation.

We also use the following assumptions:

transaction costs are homogeneous (defined as the costs of exchanging property rights);

the absolute value of transaction costs is fixed and equal to C (in units of the good by which the benefits of voluntary exchange are measured).

The amount that each of the participants in the exchange must pay for the transaction is equal to Sd and Sb, respectively, with C = Sd + Sb. If through to

23 More consistent analysis shows that this is not the case. However, the resulting modifications do not add anything fundamentally new to the answer to the question of the distribution of transaction costs between the parties as a factor of mutually beneficial exchange.

denote the share of total transaction costs paid by individual A, then SA = kC and SB = (1-k)C, where 0< к < 1.

Due to the peculiarities of the prerequisites used, only two options are possible from the point of view of the exchange: either it exists or it does not. This means that the exchange scales are fixed if they differ from zero. The complication of the model is possible by weakening the assumption of zero variable transaction costs, when the total cost depends on the number of goods exchanged.

The first option is realized when the relation is fulfilled: Ra + Rb< С. Величина трансакционных издержек настолько высока, что не позволяет извлечь выгоды от добровольного обмена.

The second option can be implemented if: Ra + Rb> C. However, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the exchange. In this regard, several situations should be considered, each of which corresponds to the condition indicated by the inequality:

The first three situations show that the distribution of transaction costs matters in terms of the possibilities for voluntary exchange. Within the framework of the first situation, the following relation is a sufficient condition for the exchange: 1 - R&/C< k < Ra/C. Во второй ситуации достаточным условием является 0 < к < Ra/C. В третьей ситуации 1 - R&/C < к < 1. Только для четвертой ситуации распределение трансакционных издержек не имеет значения в плане возможностей осуществления обмена. Вместе с тем это не означает независимости распределения выгод обмена от величины трансакционных издержек, которые вынуждены нести участники.

The set of situations can be significantly reduced if we assume the possibility of subsequent compensations that will be paid by one exchange participant to another. However, the benefits of offsets must outweigh the costs associated with concluding and enforcing the relevant agreement.

The formulation of the problem in the proposed form is not accidental. When studying issues related to the specification of rights and the exchange of property rights, as a rule, attention is paid to the possibility of reducing the overall level of transaction costs as a means of ensuring a mutually beneficial exchange. The above example shows that the mechanism that distributes the burden of transaction costs among the participants in the exchange is of fundamental importance.

Up to this point, we have assumed that the total value of transaction costs does not depend on their distribution among the participants in the exchange. This is a consequence of the implicit assumption of the homogeneity of economic agents due to the lack of specialization, information sharing, and comparative advantages. The removal of this restriction leads to the fact that the distribution of transaction costs between different participants in the exchange determines at the same time a change in the total amount of data from

holder. Thus, in our example, there is no longer an exogenously given value of transaction costs C. Instead, there is some value Cd* for a situation where the entire burden of transaction costs falls on individual A, and Cb* for a situation where the costs of exchanging property rights are financed by account B. An individual who has advantages in assessing the quality of a particular product, realizing this opportunity, thereby saves on total transaction costs. Let us assume that A has such an advantage. With some degree of approximation, the total value of transaction costs can be considered as a linear combination of costs for A and B: C* = aCA* + (1-a)SB*, where 0< а < 1. Таким образом, dC*/da < 0.

The exception is the situation when, despite savings on total transaction costs, the exchange will not take place precisely because their residual value will still be higher than the marginal estimate of the benefits from the exchange, or Ra< aC*. В этом случае вновь необходимо обратить внимание на возможности компенсации ex post со стороны того участника обмена, который не обладает преимуществами в экономии на трансакционных издержках, но в то же время согласен выплатить компенсацию за создаваемый «специалистом» позитивный внешний эффект.

As an illustration, we can offer the standard Edgeworth box model, which determines the potential benefits of exchange, expressed in units of exchanged goods.

Figure 2.1. Edgeworth Box: Mutual Exchange Benefits and Transaction Costs

UAi,Ua2 - indifference curves of individual A; UEbUE2 - indifference curves of individual B; E - the initial distribution of benefits X and Y between A and B; AYa, AYE - the maximum possible mutual benefits of the exchange, expressed in units of the good Y; AHd, AHB - the maximum possible mutual benefits of exchange, expressed in units of the good X; KK - contract curve; K] - the final distribution of benefits, when all the benefits of the exchange are assigned to B; K^ is the final distribution of goods, when all the benefits of the exchange are assigned to A.

If transaction costs are equal to zero, then no matter how the benefits from the exchange should be distributed, the exchange must consist of

and the final allocation of resources should be on the QC contract curve. If transaction costs are greater than zero, then in order to determine the final distribution of benefits, it is necessary to take into account (a) absolute value transaction costs; (b) the distribution of the burden of transaction costs among the parties involved; (e) the overall value of the benefits of the exchange; (d) distribution of exchange benefits (respectively, in terms of Y or X).

No less important is the presence of comparative advantages in saving on various types of transaction costs, which means recognition of the significance of not only their heterogeneity and endogeneity.

2.3. Types of transaction costs and means of minimizing them

Due to the fact that transaction costs are a central category in the new institutional economics, and also because of the rather complex methodological problems associated with the formulation of an operational definition of transaction costs, this chapter will consider various options for typology, as well as discuss in more detail certain types transaction costs. These include: the costs of identifying alternatives, the costs of making calculations, the costs of measurement, the costs of concluding contracts, the costs of opportunistic behavior, the costs of specification and protection of property rights.

Costs of identifying alternatives. Due to the fact that uncertainty exists in any real economic system, as well as the moment of opposition of the economic interests of acting subjects, one should recognize the general distribution of transaction costs. At the same time, one of the fundamental moments of the functioning of the economic system is an individual choice, regardless of which of the economic systems is the object of study. In turn, decision-making involves a comparison of alternatives. However, alternatives are not initially given to the person. Decision maker. That is why their identification is the result of economic activity, since it is associated with costs.

In conditions of uncertainty, costs inevitably arise due to the search for the most favorable price (both on the part of buyers and on the part of sellers - for the transaction transaction) of other contract terms, as well as the selection of potential counterparties (in terms of the reliability of their promises).

The existence of this type of transaction costs is determined primarily by the differentiation of prices for the same product, not due to differences in transportation costs. At the heart of such differentiation of prices lies the phenomenon of uncertainty, which manifests itself in the fragmentation and heterogeneity of information received by each economic agent.

A similar problem arises with potential counterparties, which also turn out to be heterogeneous.

It is the spread of prices for the same good (that is, within a relatively small region) that is one of the signs of market immaturity. From this point of view, the law of one price operates in its pure form when transaction costs are negligible or equal to zero.

As J. Stigler, one of the founders of the modern economic theory of information, noted:

“In all markets, prices change more or less frequently, and unless the market is completely centralized, no one will know all the prices fixed in this moment various sellers (or buyers). A buyer (or seller) wishing to determine the best price must interrogate different sellers (or buyers), a phenomenon I will call "searching"2.

In its simplest form, the search model can be represented by assuming that the only essential element of the contract is the price of the goods. Suppose a buyer decides to buy good X. Sellers this product distributed evenly, taking into account existing prices (Pi = 8 and Pg = 6), so that the standard deviation is equal to one. It is necessary to determine the number of search units (the number of interviewed sellers) in order to make a purchase decision. It is known that the search is carried out under the condition of a constant return and is expressed by the equation: TC = 0.0625N, where N is the number of interviewed sellers. To do this, calculate the expected minimum price for each step. Since the sellers are evenly distributed, the expected minimum price as a result of the first step will be equal to 7:

P * A) \u003d / * 1 + b-Ppi=0.5x8 + 0.5x6 = 7

At the second step, the probability that the minimum price will again be R = 8 is equal to p = 0.25. Accordingly, the expected minimum price will be equal to:

^min(2)= Р2Р, +(l - R2)= 0.25 x 8 + 0.75 x 6 = 6.5 For an N-ro step in the search, the expected minimum price will be:

Respectively:

( The calculation results can be summarized in a table.

24 Stigler J. J. (1995), Economics of information// firm theory, V.M. Galperin (ed.), St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, p. 507–508.

Table 2.1. Optimal search scope

Probability of Pi as the minimum price

Probability Pr as the minimum price

Expected minimum price

Marginal Search Gain

Net Marginal Gain

from searching

Thus, in our example, the optimal number of search steps is 5. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the consumer, when deciding on the number of sellers he interviewed, must be aware of the existence of different prices for the same product. Uncertain is only the distribution between specific sellers. Strictly speaking, the proposed illustration gives a greatly simplified picture, since it is not difficult to estimate the magnitude of the marginal benefits derived from the implementation of the search. Meanwhile, in reality, one of the problems, which is called the "information paradox", is that it is rather difficult to determine the optimal scope of the search due to the difficulty of assessing the ex ante significance of the information received.

To minimize this kind of costs, institutions such as specialized markets, in particular stock exchanges, as well as advertising and / or reputation are used. With regard to organized markets, cost savings are possible due to the concentration of supply and demand. As a result, the circulation of information is accelerated and prices are more intensively equalized. They represent the main product produced by the exchange.

Checking the reliability of the counterparty (as one of the moments of the search process) also requires time and resources. So, in order to receive a checkbook with a bank guarantee, a potential client will not only have to fill out a fairly detailed form in which he gives information about himself that is of interest to the bank, including income, but also talk with an employee or head of a bank branch, provide a letter of recommendation, and, if necessary, to probation with a book without the right to overdraft.

To save on this type of transaction costs, reputation is also used (as a socially significant assessment of an economic agent in terms of business ethics, if we are talking about an entrepreneur), which, in turn, can be considered as an asset (having a certain value and, therefore, can be used, for example, as a contribution to the authorized capital or to foreclose on it). In particular, instruct-

The evidence in this example turns out to be a form of collateral, which should ensure the predictability of the client's behavior in the future.

In connection with the above, it should be noted that reputation is closely related to the means of individualization of enterprises, in particular with trade names, trademarks, service marks and appellations of origin. It is these tools that allow consumers to save on search costs. Considering the importance of the means of individualization of enterprises, in particular trademarks, from the consumer's point of view, W. Landes and R. Posner write:

“I do not need to study the characteristics of the brand I am about to acquire, because the trademark tells me in a succinct way that this is the same brand that I liked before”25.

The stronger (recognizable, confirming the expectations of buyers in repeated purchases) is a trademark as a source of information, the greater the savings on search costs, the higher, all other things being equal, the price that the seller assigns can be. Economic aspects related to the creation and protection of trademark rights, taking into account the interests of various groups of economic agents, both for a developed market economy and for the Russian economy, are considered in the study of the Bureau economic analysis 26

Measurement costs. Any good has many dimensions, since it has a complex of useful properties. Here is what D. North writes about this:

“The utility we derive arises from the various properties of the product and service, or in the case of the activity of ... an agent, from the many individual operations that make up his activity. This means... that when I consume orange juice, its usefulness to me lies in the amount of juice I drink, the vitamin C content, the taste and aroma, although the exchange I have made is simply paying two dollars for fourteen oranges. Similarly, when I buy a car, I get in return certain color, speed, styling, trim, legroom, gas per mile, all of which are valued properties, even though what I bought is just a car. When I buy the services of doctors, part of the purchase is their qualifications, the manner in which they treat patients, and the time spent waiting in the waiting room. When, as the head of the economics department, I hire junior lecturers, the object of hiring is not only the quantity and quality ... of teaching and the output of scientific products ... but also many other aspects of their work: do they prepare for classes, do they come on time, do they help colleagues whether they participate in the life of the faculty, whether they abuse their power over students, whether they call friends in Hong Kong at the expense of the faculty ... In order to evaluate these properties, it is necessary to expend resources; before-

25 Landes, William M. and Posner, Richard A. (1987), Trademark Law: An Economic Perspective, 30 Journal of Law and Economics, 269.

26Shastitko A.E. (ed.) (2000), Transaction costs associated with the creation and use of property rights to trademarks in Russia, Moscow: TEIS, Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Additional resources are required in order to establish and evaluate the rights that are transferred in the exchange”21.

Since there are two types of characteristics of goods - physical and legal, then we can distinguish two types of measurement costs associated with the evaluation of properties belonging to different types.

It is necessary to measure and / or evaluate the presence of these properties, which involves the cost of measuring equipment, time, as well as the use of surrogates (assessment of the quality of goods by physical properties, by price, by estimates of other agents) or intermediaries (including state ones according to formal status): in the form of a state trade inspectorate, consumer societies, appraisers, competitors, etc. In addition, knowledge of the rules is necessary, as well as the technology for enforcing them in order to assess how great the expected utility of a thing is.

In connection with the definition of this type of transaction costs, three categories of benefits could be distinguished: researched, experienced and trusted.

Goods with prohibitively high costs of quality measurement prior to their acquisition (consumption) are called experience. Goods with a relatively cheap procedure for preliminary determination of their quality are called "explored" (search). The quality of the latter can be relatively easily assessed prior to purchase, while the quality of the others is mainly in the process of consumption. Credence goods are characterized by high costs of quality measurement both ex ante and ex post.

Note that the same good can be experienced in one situation, and researched in another. In particular, it may be of great importance physical properties goods, including divisibility, as well as technology and existing rules of measurement. For example, if a customer purchases one orange, then the cost of measurement in relation to its value is too high. However, if we assume that oranges are standard, then when buying ten kilograms, you can eat one orange to evaluate the entire batch.

The trust of goods is based on the difficulty of isolating a positive effect (or its absence) due to the complexity of the result obtained. Among the trusted ones, there may well be institutions as benefits, the coordination properties of which (allowing to increase the well-being of each of the interested individuals) are far from always clear even to specialists in the relevant field. From this point of view, the production of a given good does not necessarily lead to an unambiguous assessment of the correspondence between the expected benefits and the actual ones. Other examples include pharmaceutical preparations, especially the action of which is extended over time and therefore quite misleadingly identifiable.

When it comes to the organization of the market for an experienced durable good, a set of signals is of great importance, for example, warranty after-sales service, the possibility of replacement within certain period defective goods for a quality product of the same type, etc. Warranty after-sales service performs the function of a kind of insurance for the buyer, which means for him a fee for transferring risk to the seller. In turn, insurance will be valid if the consumer meets a certain set of requirements for the use of the good.

27 North D. (1997), Institutions, institutional changes and the functioning of the economy, M.: Nachala, p.47.

Information about the properties of goods is distributed unevenly between counterparties, which is the content of the phenomenon of information asymmetry, which forces the party, which has relatively less information, to bear relatively higher costs (through the use of experts, time, etc.) associated with the restoration of symmetry in possession of it.

In the historical aspect, the institutional response to the costs of measurement was the system of weights and measures, which ensured the comparability of different quantities of goods, greatly facilitating the exchange. However, it (the system of weights and measures) can be interpreted more broadly, including, for example, a measure of economic success in the form of the maximum (or acceptable value) of economic profit, which is socially significant, although it is perceived by each economic agent individually. Thus, economic profit (moreover, in monetary terms) as an objective function, as a parameter of success, is also a kind of means of reducing the costs of measuring performance.

The use of profit as a measure of economic success can be seen as the result of the evolution of the very mechanism of selection of economic units that forms the environment around the enterprise. In addition, due to the diversity of aspects of the functioning of modern economic organization, as well as the presence of short-term and long-term aspects of the activity, this criterion needs to be clarified. That's why in financial management when assessing the state of the enterprise, a set of indicators is used.

Contracting costs. Since in conditions of uncertainty it is difficult to predict the development of events, contracts, on the one hand, are designed to give stability to relationships, but on the other hand, the development of contract terms, their coordination between the parties also requires resources and time.

The development of a contract containing promises involves the projection of the actions of the parties to the contract for the future. However, for this, a formalized contract must contain codified information, as well as imply understanding (decoding) of the conditions specified in it. In addition, contract development involves prior communication.

To illustrate, we can list the constituent elements of a bank's loan transaction with a client on the part of the bank: first, consideration of the loan application and interviewing the client; secondly, studying the creditworthiness of the client and assessing the degree of risk based on the documents accompanying the application (financial report, cash flow statement, internal financial reports, funding forecast, tax returns, business plans); thirdly, preparation of loan proposals in the event of a fundamentally positive assessment of the application29; fourthly, it is necessary to

28 With regard to the conditions for profit maximization in the long run, the use of this indicator depends on the way in which ownership of the firm is specified and protected, the market value of which is defined as the discounted stream of expected profits.

29Due to the fact that these proposals may differ significantly from the requests of the borrower, there is a need for negotiations. Since the loan price to be set, terms, repayment methods, and so on are the subjects of bargaining, it is essential which of the bidders has a comparative advantage in re-

ment the loan and sign a loan agreement containing the agreed terms on certificates and guarantees, characteristics of the loan, binding conditions, prohibition conditions, definition of the situation of violation of the loan agreement, sanctions in case of violation of the agreement.

When considering the costs of concluding contracts, it is necessary to take into account the properties of the transactions that they provide. In the economic theory of transaction costs, there are three key properties of transactions: frequency, level of uncertainty, and asset specificity. If the level of uncertainty is low, as well as the frequency of re-execution of the transaction and the specificity of the asset, then the development of a standard contract does not present great difficulties. Due to the standard nature of the contract, there are quite wide opportunities for using the state as an organization with comparative advantages in the implementation of violence, which at the same time, through the judicial system, allows you to resolve controversial issues.

Another thing is when the level of uncertainty is high enough, as well as the frequency of interaction. In this contract, it is no longer possible to stipulate all the nuances of the relationship between counterparties. Then a specialized system is required that determines the responsible within the framework of given relationship between economic agents (in particular, arbitration courts, industry associations, etc.). Finally, if transactions are characterized not only by continuity but also by a high degree of asset specificity, the contract not only cannot be complete, but a significant part of it becomes implicit. This is due to the fact that in conditions where the relationship between the parties is complex, their formalization may require significant costs, while the use of a legal mechanism to ensure their observance turns out to be difficult or impossible due to prohibitively high costs.

Among the ways to reduce the costs of concluding contracts, standard forms of contracts are sometimes used if the situations regulated by this contract are typical in terms of mutual obligations of the parties. In addition, to reduce the costs of concluding a contract, a third party is used as a guarantor, which can partly compensate for the lack of trust of the parties to the contract from each other.

Costs of specification and protection of property rights. Because a good has many dimensions in terms of how it can be used, certain resources and time for a clear definition of the object and subject of property rights and the method of vesting them. A typical example is the definition of borders between neighboring states or garden plots. From this point of view, the costs associated with the settlement of border disputes (including the maintenance of armed units in the immediate vicinity of the border, the construction of fortified areas), as well as the cost of the services of a land surveyor, should be

dialects. A key factor in obtaining these benefits is confidential information, which allows the owner of it to build a game on favorable terms for him. Accordingly, the extraction and / or storage of confidential information also turns out to be an element of costs in the preparation of the contract.

classified as transaction costs. The problem of specification of property rights, as well as the delimitation of rights, arises almost everywhere if the system of interaction between people about limited resources is reproduced. In particular, defining the scope of competence within the firm, household, public institution are also associated with the definition of the subject-bearer of the right, the object, the set of actions that can be performed in relation to this object, as well as the conditions for delegating this right.

To the extent that the activity of specifying property rights is subject to the law of diminishing ultimate performance, we can talk about some optimal level of their “erosion” (that is, the reproduction of a situation where it is not possible to ensure the exact observance of a particular legal regime). Thus, perfect exclusivity in the exercise of a particular right is the exception rather than the rule.

It must be emphasized that here we are talking not only about the costs associated with the direct protection of property rights, an essential element of which is the cost of maintaining law enforcement agencies, but also partly about the costs in the field of education, to the extent that they provide:

informing people about the existing legal and social conventions of the exchange;

the process of socialization, which determines the appropriate fulfillment of obligations (specified in the contract);

direct reduction of costs associated with differences in social, ethnic, cultural terms between groups in society, through a common language, history, cultural values. From this point of view, the problem faced by countries becomes quite understandable. Western Europe in connection with the flow of immigrants from "unfavorable" regions. The point is not even that the number of potential violators of established rules is increasing, but that an increase in the heterogeneity of the population inevitably leads to an increase in the costs of maintaining order and communication between various groups population.

A key factor in saving on the costs of enforcing rules, and in particular contracts, is ideology. Through the use of ideology, not only the cost of decision-making is saved, but also the internalization of norms30, so that they are carried out even if their violation goes unnoticed by others. The formation of a common field of interaction (in the form of a single language, culture, etc.) generates a positive network external effect, which greatly facilitates the exchange of activities between economic agents.

The costs of opportunistic behavior.opportunistic can be considered such behavior that is aimed at achieving the economic agent's own goals and is not limited by moral considerations. At the heart of opportunistic behavior is the mismatch of economic interests, due to limited resources, indefinitely.

30 Internalization of the norm is the process of transforming a restriction into an element of a system of preferences, values.

division and, as a result, imperfect specification of the terms of the contract. If the expected ones associated with avoiding the terms of the contract turn out to be less than the benefits that it will bring, then this economic agent will choose one form or another of opportunistic behavior.

From the point of view of the contract process, two types of opportunistic behavior are distinguished - pre-contract and post-contract.

A form of pre-contract opportunism is unfavorable, or worsening the conditions of exchange, selection (adverse selection). It is characterized by unfavorable properties for some economic agents. external environment, highlighting in it as potential partners those economic agents that are the least desirable for the subject under consideration. This is a consequence of the existence of benefits hidden for the economic agent. An example is the used car market, or "lemons," where lower quality cars are crowding out better quality cars.

The essence of this model is as follows. Suppose there are 160 owners on the market, each offering one car for sale. Demand is also represented by 160 buyers. Cars and, accordingly, owners are divided into three groups, in each of which the offer price is the same for all cars. The distribution of vehicles by category is presented in Table 2.2. In addition, the demand price for a car of a certain quality is the same for all buyers. The asymmetry of information is manifested in the fact that each car owner is aware of its quality, while buyers have information about the share of cars of different quality in the market, which correspond to the probability of acquiring a car of the corresponding quality.

Table 2.2. Lemon Market

Car share

Ask price

Offer price

Potential win value for buyers and sellers

High quality

Medium quality

Low quality

If the information were complete and distributed symmetrically, then there would be three submarkets of cars, each of which would receive a total gain of buyers and sellers, estimated at 400,000 rubles (the method of distribution of this gain does not matter here).

However, for a buyer who buys a car, the amount he is willing to pay for it corresponds to the mathematical expectation of demand prices (assumed to be risk neutral): 0.5*50000 + 0.25*40000 + 0.25*30000 = 42500. Thus, the buyer is ready to pay 42500 rubles for a randomly selected car. Given price will suit sellers of cars of average and worse quality. Better quality cars are being squeezed out of this market.

However, even after that, the situation for cars of average quality is repeated (now they have become “plums”, that is, cars of better quality). The mathematical expectation of the demand price is: 0.5 * 40,000 + 0.5 * 30,000 = 35,000 rubles. This price turns out to be lower than the one that the owners of "plums" would agree to. Thus, only cars remain on the market.

of the worst quality, and the total gain for buyers and sellers due to the fact that the market has narrowed to one category of cars will be 80,000 rubles. Lost winnings equal to 320,000 rubles.

J. Akerlof characterizes this situation as follows:

“Bad cars drive out good cars because they both sell for the same price.” 31.

Lost winnings create incentives for car owners to High Quality produce signals that make it possible to distinguish these machines from the general mass. If this fails, it can be assumed that the transaction costs associated with quality measurement are prohibitively high.

One option that owners of "drains" can use is guarantees. In our case, a Category 1 car dealer might offer a deal whereby if the car is found to be of poor quality during use (and in this model, the used car is assumed to be an "experimental" or "experimental" good, since the cost of measuring its quality before the start of operation by the new owner is prohibitively high), the buyer is paid a predetermined amount in the agreement. The lower the probability of a malfunction, the lower the expected amount of warranty payments, and vice versa. That is why the owners of "lemons" are not interested in giving guarantees.

Another illustration of the problem of adverse selection is provided by the labor market. If the wage rate is set by the firm at the level of the average productivity of a worker in a given specialty, then the most productive workers will refuse to enter into a contract on such terms, since they, having advantages in information about their abilities, value them higher.

In conditions of complete certainty, the wages of a productive and unproductive worker correspond to their marginal product, that is, Wn = MCI; WH = MPH. In the event that the level of productivity of a particular employee is unknown, the wage rate will be the same and correspond to the expected productivity of the employee W* = xMRP + (1- x)Mn. Thus Wn>W*>WH.

In this case, the existing costs of measurement adversely affect both the well-being of the employer and the productive worker, since they narrow the area of ​​mutually beneficial exchange. On the contrary, unproductive workers are interested in the existence of this kind of asymmetry, since in this case they can receive a higher income than in conditions of complete certainty. We can say that productive workers create positive externalities for unproductive workers, and the latter create negative externalities for productive workers and employers.

As a result, people enter the workforce whose average productivity is lower than that for which the established wage rate is calculated. In this regard, the use of wages as a signal to potential employees is hardly flawless in terms of selection efficiency.

An institutional response to the existence of a problem of adverse selection in the labor market can be, firstly, the use of signals,

31 Akerlof J. (1994), The Lemon Market: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism// THESIS,issue 5, p.92.

second, self-selection. As signals, data on the education of a potential employee are used, including the educational institution that this employee graduated from, a system of private recommendations, as well as preliminary information obtained through questionnaires and interviews.

Getting an education indicates a certain level of the employee's ability to absorb necessary knowledge and skills. In this case, it is assumed that the institution whose diploma is considered as a signal has the necessary reputation. People are expected to refuse to invest in education if the opportunity cost of getting it is too high relative to the wage gap.

To the extent that spending on education increases marginal product worker, they are productive. However, due to the fact that it is often the very fact of receiving education that matters, and not its content, the costs associated with the production of a signal can also be considered unproductive.

It is important to note here that in order to explain the behavior of employees, the characteristics of educational institutions must be ranked according to a certain criterion, reflecting, in particular, the level of real requirements for applicants and students, etc. ... In turn, the latter can be summarized in the assessment of such an asset as the reputation of the educational institution. In addition, the employment of graduates and their subsequent career is essential. In other words, we are talking about the rating of educational institutions in the relevant specialties.

In the selection process, written or oral recommendations are often of great importance. This is especially true for the labor market, which is often characterized by informal connections and lack of standardization, which does not allow using publicly available information about a higher education institution as a reliable signal of the quality of an employee.

The system of signals does not always make it possible to satisfactorily solve the problem of unfavorable selection; therefore, a self-selection system is used as an addition to it. It can be built on the existence of a menu of contracts that sets the expectations of potential employees and allows them to choose the form of the agreement according to their intertemporal preferences and abilities. For example, M. Aoki notes that in the Japanese labor market, the principle of choosing between initially higher wages without guarantees of long-term employment and further wage growth and initially low wages with certain long-term employment prospects and wage increases is widely used:

“... the coexistence of labor contracts for the performance of relatively standard jobs, together with contracts for entry into the hierarchy of ranks, functions as a mechanism for the “self-selection” of workers in solving the problem of optimal choice”^2.

A similar situation arises with the selection of insurance buyers in the insurance services market. If health insurance services were provided to all categories of the population at the same price, then as a result, insurance companies would have to deal only with clients who have the highest risk of illness, in particular the elderly. Institutional reaction

32 Aoki M. (1994), St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, p. 110.

Insurance companies use age as a signal, as well as the results of a medical examination, as a signal that is complemented by differentiation of insurance premiums.

Since a contract in economic theory is a process that consists of several stages, then along with the pre-contract, that is, before the conclusion of a contract as a document, there is also post-contract opportunism. Post-contractual opportunistic behavior includes moral, or subjective, risk (moral hazard) (including in the form of shirking). It is expressed in the concealment of information by one of the parties, allowing to benefit to the detriment of the other party. For example, the use of working time in own purposes as free through imitation of vigorous activity is a means of hiding information about the actual results. This form of post-contract opportunistic behavior is called "shirking" (shirking). Another example is the use of money received for the implementation of an investment project for the construction of a mansion or transactions with securities. This option is also possible: after the conclusion of the contract, one of the parties, taking advantage of a favorable set of circumstances, advantages in information, insists on changing the conditions that allow redistributing the gain from the exchange in its favor. In this case, there is another form of post-contract opportunistic behavior - "extortion", or blackmail (hold-up).

Let us consider in more detail the contractual relationship between the lender and the borrower. An important characteristic of these relationships is the impossibility of taking into account all circumstances in the future, especially when it comes to long-term credit. This means that the contract cannot be comprehensive (because of the prohibitively high costs of its development and conclusion). As a result, the economic interests of the lender and the borrower are not fully aligned. Therefore, the requirement of incentive compatibility as a prerequisite for effective contract implementation is not met.

The institutional response to the possibility of post-contract opportunistic behavior by the borrower is control by the lender. As such a measure, credit monitoring by the bank as a creditor is used. It can detect or prevent various forms of opportunistic behavior. For example, natural opportunism, according to Williamson, does not contain a conscious intention to violate the loan agreement. However, an analysis of the borrower's activities carried out by banking experts may show that in the future he will not be able to repay the loan. The other extreme form of opportunism is Machiavellian opportunism, which occurs immediately after the conclusion of a loan agreement, regardless of how the bank behaves. However, the most common is, apparently, the strategic form of post-contract opportunism, which is based on the deliberate concealment of information and actions that are contrary to the terms of the contract, but caused by changed circumstances. That is why, for safety net, the bank must invest in an information network to prevent the emergence of problem and bad loans.

In connection with the last type of transaction costs, it should be noted that O. Williamson distinguishes three forms of selfish behavior: strong, semi-

strong and weak 33. Opportunism refers to a strong form of selfish behavior, since it allows an economic agent to achieve its goal by incomplete provision of information to the counterparty, its distortion, which is possible in conditions of asymmetry of the latter. Thus, opportunistic behavior is seen as following one's own interests, including deception, which (deception) can take many forms. A semi-strong form of selfish behavior is the pursuit of self-interest under conditions of certainty. It is this form of behavior that was implicitly accepted in neoclassical theory (due to the equality of transaction costs to zero). Strictly speaking, neoclassical theory does not deny the existence of the problem of opportunism, since in recent decades models of choice and exchange based on subjective expected utility have been actively developed. This makes it possible to formalize the explanation of the process of formation of institutions, an example of which is the appendix at the end of this chapter on the organization of the insurance services market.

Finally, a weak form of self-interest orientation is “obedience”, which is possible, first of all, by identifying oneself with a certain community (family, firm, state), of which this individual is a part.

2.4. Quantifying transaction costs

In the economic literature, there are two approaches to the possibility of quantifying transaction costs: ordinalist and cardinalist. Most researchers in the framework of the new institutional economic theory use an ordinalist approach, explaining the change in the structure of transactions in the economy or in the industry, the replacement of intra-company transactions with market ones and vice versa, the emergence of hybrid forms of institutional agreements by changes in relative transaction costs.

At the same time, many attempts have been made to quantify transaction costs in the cardinal version, that is, to obtain such quantitative data that would show the magnitude of transaction costs or their share in the gross national or gross domestic product, a share in the transaction price or as a sum of money (including monetary value time required to complete the transaction.

Some of these assessments were carried out in relation to a particular market, others - to the economy as a whole. In the first paragraph, we will consider the problems of quantifying transaction costs within a single market, and in the second - at the level of the economy as a whole.

33 Williamson O.I. (1993), Behavioral premises of modern economic analysis// THESIS, v. 1, issue 3, pp. 43–49; Williamson O.I. (1996) St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, p. 97–101.

Transaction costs on the New York Stock Exchange. The choice of one of the fragments of the monetary sector of the economy as an object for quantitative assessment of transaction costs is, in a certain sense, logical, since it was within the framework of the monetary theory that studies of transaction costs were presented quite widely before the tools of the new institutional economic theory were widely used in empirical studies.

The first attempt to quantify transaction costs in a single market was made by Harold Demsetz, as reflected in his 1968 article "Transaction Costs"34. The object of analysis was the New York Stock Exchange (NSE) as a means of ensuring the rapid exchange of securities and, accordingly, ownership of real assets. On this basis, transaction costs were defined as the costs of using the NSE to quickly exchange shares for money.

X. Demsetz proposed to single out three elements in the composition of transaction costs: commissions to brokers, spread and transfer tax. However, in this article, he proposes to ignore taxes, since the latter complicate the analysis without affecting the conclusions. Apparently, this is also due to the fact that the taxes themselves are not directly related to the functioning of the exchange as such. In turn, commissions to brokers are set on the basis of a collective decision of the members of the exchange as a percentage of the share price. That is why the main attention was paid to the formation of the spread.

The spread arises due to the existence for a certain category of participants in the game of the need or desire to immediately sell or purchase shares in conditions where the search for a counterparty is associated with costs. Then there is a gap between the price that a player would pay or receive waiting for a deal (for example, during the day), and the price that he actually pays (receives) in the event of an immediate transaction (Fig. 2.2). This situation can be represented with a graph:

SS - the supply curve of sellers waiting for the sale of shares; S"S" - the supply curve for the immediate sale of shares; DD is the demand curve for buyers waiting to purchase shares; D"D" - demand curve for stock buyers with zero waiting period; R*

34 Demsetz, Harold (1968), Cost of Transacting, 81 33–53.

Figure 2.2. Spread on the securities market

The price of a share, established if each of its owners and potential buyers would directly carry out a transaction when the costs of the latter are negligible; Rp - the price of the immediate purchase of shares; Rsch- the price of the immediate sale of shares; (Рп - Р*) - buyer's fee for waiver of waiting (per one purchased share); (Р*-Рpr) - seller's fee for waiver of waiting (per one sold share); S = Р„ - Рpr-spread.

In Figure 2.2, the point Eo corresponds to the equilibrium conditions when transaction costs are equal to zero. All transactions are made instantly and without the cost of the transaction itself. The point Eo "corresponds to the equilibrium conditions, when the transaction costs are greater than zero, but each of the shareholders makes a transaction independently. Finally, the points Ei and Er correspond to the equilibrium conditions for buyers and sellers, when the transaction time is negligible due to the use of intermediary services, but transaction costs (expressed as services of intermediaries) are positive.

Then S / P = (Pp - Ppr) / P, (where P is the average price) can be considered as the level of transaction costs in the sale and acquisition of shares. X. Demsetz notes that the spread is 40% of the total transaction costs, which, in turn, are estimated at about 1.3% of the share price of $48.

X. Demsetz put forward a hypothesis, according to which the spread depends on four factors: the number of players (N) involved in trading in a given stock; number of transactions (T); the number of markets (M) where this security is traded; finally, its prices (P). It was supposed to check the dependencies expressed by the relations: dS/dN<0; dS/dT<0; dS/dM<0; dS/dP>0. In other words, the more actively the security is traded, the smaller the spread should be; the more expensive the paper, the greater the spread (Fig. 2.3). The activity with which transactions occur for a particular stock is expressed in the number of participants in the transaction, the number of trading floors on which this stock is quoted and, finally, the number of transactions that are made with this security.

This hypothesis can be illustrated using a graph also proposed by H. Demsetz.

X - shares traded on each of the sub-markets; Si Si - the supply curve of sellers waiting for the sale of shares Xi; S "iS" i - the supply curve for immediate sales of shares X i; D1D1 - the demand curve of buyers who are waiting for the acquisition of shares Xi; D "iD" i - the demand curve of buyers of shares Xi with a zero waiting period; S2S2 - the supply curve of sellers waiting for the sale of X2 shares; S "2S" 2 - the supply curve for the immediate sale of shares X2; D2D2 - the demand curve of buyers who are waiting for the acquisition of X2 shares; D"2D"2 - the demand curve for buyers of shares X2 with a zero waiting period; P* - the price of shares Xi and X2, established in the event that each of its owners and potential buyers would directly carry out a transaction when the costs of the latter are negligible; Р„1 - the price of the immediate sale of shares Xi; Р„р1 - the price of the immediate purchase of shares Xi; X*i - equilibrium volume of transactions, taking into account the spread for the first type of shares (pcs.); X*2 - the equilibrium volume of transactions, taking into account the spread for the second type of shares (pieces); (Pni - Р*) - buyer's fee for waiving the waiting (per one acquired share Xi); (P*-Pnpi) - the seller's fee for waiving the expectation (per one sold share) when selling the share Xx Rpg - the price of the immediate sale of the share X2; Рpr2 - the price of the immediate purchase of a share; (Рпг- Р*) - buyer's fee for waiver of waiting (per one purchased share); (Р*- Ршй) - the seller's fee for not waiting (per one sold share) when selling X2 share.

X. Demsetz gives a rather simple explanation for this phenomenon. The more actively a stock is traded, the greater the economies of scale in terms of lower average transaction costs, or

cost per share. Significant potential for economies of scale is usually associated with the emergence of a natural monopoly, which makes it possible to extract economic profits in the long run. However, in this case, competition between different groups of players kept the spread at a level close to the transaction costs.

Figure 2.3. Economies of scale and spread in the securities market

R

This analysis was carried out on a random sample consisting of two hundred types of shares of companies. Observations were carried out for two days, the interval between which was one month.

Estimation of transaction costs in the US economy. For the first time, an attempt to systematically assess transaction costs in the economy as a whole was made by D. North and J. Wallis. Its results are reflected in the article "Measuring the transaction sector in the American economy in 1870-1970"35. To this day, this work by D. North and J. Wallis remains relevant, despite the abundance of literature on transaction costs. The presentation in this section is based on the content of this article.

In order to assess the significance of the studies carried out and to understand the limits of their application, it is necessary to dwell on the methodology of quantitative assessment, which is directly related to such a definition of the concept of transaction costs, which is used by D. North and J. Wallis as a working one.

The certainty of transaction costs and their empirical prototype is presented through an analysis of four types of relationships and their corresponding activities:

35 Wallis, John J. and North, Douglass C (1986), Measuring the Transaction Sector in the American Economy, 1870–1970, in

a) the relationship between individual buyers and sellers;

b) intercompany relations;

c) the production of services by intermediary firms of various types;

d) relations related to the protection of property rights.

A. TRANSACTION COSTS FOR INDIVIDUAL BUYERS AND SELLERS

The proposed list indicates that transaction costs are ubiquitous, associated with all types of behavior involving interaction between economic agents36.

Consider the transaction costs that arise when buying and selling a house. First, let's find out how this problem looks from the buyer's point of view. Transaction costs include:

time to inspect the house (the value of which is determined through the opportunity cost of using time);

costs of obtaining information about prices, as well as other options for buying a home;

investment in reputation as a necessary condition for demonstrating reliability for the counterparty (which is known in game theory as the reliability of promises);

lawyers' fees;

notary fees;

payment of a deposit in case of consent to purchase a house, etc.

It should be noted that here a problem arises in connection with the emergence of secondary transactions, when, for example, the buyer hires a lawyer who, in turn, uses the services of a security guard, secretary, assistant. This is why the definition of transaction costs is relative. In this case, legal fees are part of the transaction costs of buying a house.

When selling a house, transaction costs include those costs that would not have to be incurred if the seller sold it to himself. It is the value of the right to use, owning a house that is the imputed cost of selling it. The transaction costs of selling a house include: 1) hiring a real estate agent, 2) advertising costs, 3) costs associated with proving reliability for the counterparty (reputation), 4) time spent showing the house to potential buyers, 5) title insurance property.

36 In connection with the question of the extent of transaction costs, it should be noted that there are several possible answers. First, the presence of transaction costs is typical only for a market economy and in the implementation of market transactions. Second, transaction costs are ubiquitous in a market economy. Finally, thirdly, transaction costs arise in any type of economy where there is an exchange of activities, problems of coordinating the actions of economic agents and distributive conflicts.

When analyzing a transaction for buying a house, we are faced with a situation where transaction costs are divided in terms of their quantification possibilities. As already noted, transaction costs corresponding to the value of the services of lawyers and realtors are relatively easy to assess. The assessment of the time for the buyer to inspect the house and the corresponding time spent by the sellers, partly the costs of building their reputation, can be carried out with great difficulty through the determination of the value of opportunity costs.

The visible, observable and measurable elements of transaction costs will be referred to as transaction services.

In addition, it should be noted that we are talking about transaction services in the legal sector of the economy. Thus, transactional services in the shadow economy also remain outside this model of quantitative assessment. The relationship between different types of costs in connection with the problem of their measurement can be represented as follows:

Figure 2.4. Correlation between costs of different types

TRANSACTION COSTS

Non-market transaction costs

The cost of transaction services

Unmeasurable transaction costs

Measurable transaction costs

This approach is quite consistent with that adopted in the system of national accounts. Moreover, it is quite possible to single out both intermediate and final transaction services, which is necessary in order to avoid double counting.

B. IN-HOUSE TRANSACTION SERVICES

Turning from the analysis of transaction costs in connection with the behavior of individual economic agents (buyers and sellers) to their analysis in connection with the behavior of groups, it should be noted that along with general moments when a firm acts as one of the market participants, specific ones arise when transaction costs in connection with intra-company relations, the implementation of intra-company transactions.

Two options for estimating transaction costs are proposed.

1. The first way is to consider a network of contracts as a certain sequence within a certain hierarchical structure: between the owners of the firm (owners) and managers, managers and controllers (supervisors), controllers and workers. As an example, consider the Ford company, which hires accountants, lawyers, secretaries to coordinate, direct and control its exchanges with managers. Managers also incur corresponding costs, which would not be the case if Ford produced cars for himself. Further, managers use a similar set of services to exchange with controllers, and so on.

It should only be noted that the structure of transaction costs varies depending on the level at which contracts are considered. The higher he

the more significant is the share of the costs of obtaining, processing and providing information. The lower this level, the higher the proportion of costs associated with monitoring the implementation of employment contracts.

2. The second method involves a simpler scheme: Ford (or shareholders) sort of enter into contracts directly with direct car manufacturers, that is, those who themselves participate in the process of transforming resources into a product. Then all the costs associated with the maintenance of people in intermediate positions in the hierarchy (foremen, inspectors, controllers, clerks, managers) constitute that part of the production costs that cannot be transferred to direct producers, and this is precisely the essential characteristic of transaction costs. Thus, all these intermediaries are used to coordinate, direct and control exchanges with those directly providing transformational services. Sometimes the costs associated with the implementation of these activities are defined as management costs or bureaucratic costs.

Regardless of the choice of a quantitative assessment scheme for the transaction sector within firms, according to D. North and J. Wallis, two conditions must be met:

3. Identification of professions that are directly related to the performance of transactional functions:

a) acquisition of resources;

b) distribution of the produced product;

c) coordination and control over the implementation of transformational functions.

4. Determining the value of transaction costs through the calculation of wages employed in the intra-company transaction sector.

B. Transaction industries

There is a special category of firms whose main activity is related to the provision of transaction services. Thus, if transformational resource services are used within the framework of their activities, at the level of the economy as a whole, they are still valued as part of transaction costs. This category of firms includes intermediaries. However, it is possible to offer a more precise specification of industries in which firms providing pure transaction services or transaction services primarily are grouped.

The so-called transaction industries include the following groups of firms:

Finance and real estate transactions. The main function of these firms is to ensure the transfer of ownership, including the search for alternatives, the preparation and implementation of transactions.

Banking and insurance. The main function is to mediate the implementation of exchanges that depend on specific circumstances and requirements (indefinite, asynchronous in time and not corresponding in quantity and size), as well as to reduce the costs associated with the security of the implementation of ownership rights to the relevant resources. In particular, one of the most important types of insurance in a transaction is title insurance, such as land.

It has already been noted above that the chosen starting point for classifying costs into transaction and transformation costs is of fundamental importance. The banking sector can be used as an example of the non-invariance of the classification of production costs. The income received by the banking sector for the implementation of settlement operations, as well as the mobilization and placement of temporarily free funds, is a measure of transaction costs, since banks ensure the coordination of plans and actions of economic agents for saving and investing, on the one hand, and mutual settlements - with another.

However, once we look at this situation from the perspective of a bank, it turns out that the part of the income that should go to cover costs corresponds to the transformation costs required to provide services to customers. Thus, transaction costs for one economic agent are a source of coverage for the transformation costs of another. In this case, not only the functional purpose of certain resources matters, but also the context in which their use is considered. Thus, here we again encounter a special case of the double counting problem.

3. Legal (legal) services. The main function of the relevant organizations is to provide coordination, direction and control over the implementation of the terms of contracts. Since the current institutional environment is quite complex, resulting in significant difficulties in keeping in mind the various regulations37 relating to the activities of the firm, lawyers are hired to save on the costs of using the existing system of rules.

With regard to the qualification of transport as a transactional or transformational industry and, accordingly, transportation as a transactional or transformational service, the way in which the good is defined is decisive. If a thing is defined as a good, taking into account the place where its consumption will take place, then transportation costs cannot be attributed to the transaction element. In particular, if materials are purchased for the construction of a country house, then these materials in the store and at the construction site are different benefits. In this moment, the principle of complementarity of characteristics that make a thing good finds expression.

4. Wholesale and retail trade. More complex is the issue of wholesale and retail trade, which includes both transactional and transformational services. The latter could include, for example, the storage of goods, which is similar to transportation, only not in space, but in time. Our task does not include a special discussion of this issue, therefore, following the proposal of D. North and J. Wallis, we will classify wholesale and retail trade services as transactional.

37 Additional difficulties in using the current system of rules are due to their possible inconsistency. It makes the need for specialized legal services all the more imperative.

results of quantitative assessment of transaction services in the US economy. Based on the formulated methodology for quantifying transaction costs, D. North and J. Wallis measured their level in the private and public sectors of the US economy.

The dynamics of the level of transaction costs in the private sector in relation to GNP in the corresponding year is as follows:

Quantitative estimates based on the proposed methodology indicate the rapid development of the private transaction sector: over a hundred years, its share in GNP has increased by more than 18 percentage points. It should be noted that the relative growth of the transaction sector turned out to be quite stable, except for the last decade (60s), when stabilization was outlined.

To determine the size of the public, or state, transaction sector, D. North and J. Wallis proposed two options, according to which we can obtain the marginal values ​​of estimates: the maximum and minimum

Table 2.3. Private

US transaction sector, b

Wo from BHlf*

Based on the data obtained, it can be concluded that the transaction sector in the US economy has been expanding over the course of a century both in accordance with the option in which part of the state services are transactional, and in accordance with the option in which all state services are non-transactional. . In the first case, its share increased by more than 28 percentage points, and in the second - by 22. What is the reason for such a rapid expansion of the transaction sector?

38 Wallis, John J. and North, Douglass C (1986), Measuring the Transaction Sector in the American Economy, 1870–1970, in Long-term factors in American Economic Growth, Stanley Engermann and Robert Gallman (eds.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 121.

Table 2.4. transaction sector, % from GNP39

years

First option

Change in percentage points for the first option

Second option

Change in percentage points for the second option

Developing the idea of ​​the reasons for the expansion of the transaction sector, there are three main factors:

1. Significantly increased the value of the costs of specification and protection of contracts, because as a result of the growth of specialization, urbanization, the exchange became more and more impersonal, depersonalized, which requires the widespread use of specialists in the field of law. The most important factor that determined the growth of this form of exchange was the development of material infrastructure, in particular transport, communications, which significantly expanded the range of possible exchange alternatives and, accordingly, led to an increase in the total costs of obtaining and processing information.

In addition, urbanization has led to the concentration of economic activity in space and the relative expansion of the real boundaries of the activities of economic agents, which has strengthened the element of interdependence. The latter, in turn, has the emergence of numerous monetary, technological and consumer externalities as one of the consequences. The arguments of the production functions of some producers of goods and services are the results of the economic activity of others in the form of volumes of goods and services produced. The same goes for the income (monetary externalities) and utility (consumer externalities) functions. This problem leads to an increase in the value of the specification of property rights, their protection. In turn, the growing importance of the delimitation of property rights and their specialized protection leads to an increase in demand for legal services.

2. The second important factor was technological change. Capital-intensive technologies can be used profitably if it is possible to ensure a consistently high level of product output, that is, to realize economies of scale. However, this requires ensuring a rhythmic, uninterrupted flow of resources, firstly; creation of a system

Ibid., 121.

we, providing coordination and control over the actions of people within the company, secondly, and the creation of an established system for managing inventory and selling products, thirdly. These factors, together with changes in the level of transport costs, made it possible and necessary to develop large forms of economic organizations with a complex system of intra-company specialization, division of labor and, accordingly, transactions that mediate its reproduction. At the same time, the listed three components correspond to three types of intra-company transactional functions in the transformational private sector of the economy, identified by D. North and J. Wallis. Thus, economies of scale in production, other things being equal, are associated with an increase in average transaction costs (Fig. 2.5).

Interpreting the changes that have taken place, they can be presented in the form of a figure, which is built on the basis of the assumptions made by the same authors.

Figure 2.5. Average transaction costs and the optimal number of transactions when changing the transformation technology

with H*N

N is the number of transactions that determines the size of the firm; T - transformational technology; I - a parameter that determines the characteristics of the institution; DtDt - implicit demand curve for transactions; StSt is the implicit transaction supply curve; Dt"Dt" - the curve of implicit demand for intra-company transactions after changing the transformation technology

Technological changes lead to an increase in the marginal product of transformational resources. This means that the same number of transactions can safely be carried out at higher average transaction costs, on the one hand, or it allows an increase in the number of transactions at the same level of average transaction costs, on the other hand, which is equivalent to an increase in the size of the firm. As a result, as shown in Figure 19, total intra-company transaction costs will rise from ATCi*Ni to ATC2*N2.

There is another aspect of this problem. Technological changes in one industry can lead to an increase in the marginal product of transaction resources in another industry and, accordingly, a decrease in average transaction costs.

holder40. The same result can be obtained due to institutional changes. In particular, the emergence and development of a system of rules that ensure the structuring of relationships between economic agents in limited liability organizations greatly facilitates the expansion of the firm. If the average transaction costs within a firm decrease, then, in accordance with the principle of determining the size of a firm, which was formulated by R. Coase, the number of transactions within it should increase4. (See Figure 2.6).

Figure 2.6. Average Transaction Costs and the Optimal Volume of Intra-Company Transactions under Institutional Changes

АТС - average transaction costs; N is the number of transactions; DtDt is the firm's implicit demand curve for transactions; StSt is the implicit transaction supply curve; St"St" - implicit transaction supply curve obtained as a result of institutional changes

In this case, an increase in the size of the firm is not necessarily associated with an increase in the intrafirm transaction sector, since the absolute elasticity of the implicit demand for transaction services may be less than unity.

3. Reducing the costs of using the political system to redistribute property rights. This decrease was due, from the point of view of D. North and J. Wallis, to a change in the system of rules for the production of rules: the main decisions should have been made through legislative commissions, which greatly facilitated the task for various groups of economic interests in exerting pressure in order to make decisions that were beneficial to them.

Taking into account the identified factors of change in the value of transaction services in the US economy, as well as the peculiarities of the methodology for their assessment, we can conclude that the sources of dynamics in the size of the transaction sector turn out to be heterogeneous.

40Here we are talking about costs per transaction.

41North, Douglass C. and Wallis, John J. (1994), Integration Institutional Change in Economic History. A Transaction Cost Approach, 150 Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 609–624.

The expansion of the transaction sector can occur due to a change in the structure of transactions: an increase in the market share. Other things being equal, this means that the overall level of transaction costs may remain the same. This suggests that measuring it by the value of transaction services is only a certain degree of approximation.

If the price elasticity of demand for transaction services turns out to be greater than one, then the expansion of the transaction sector can also occur with a decreasing price of transaction services.

The elements of production costs are transaction and transformation costs. We have already mentioned above that they can be considered as substitutes. Then a situation is possible when, with a decrease in average production costs, total transaction costs increase if transformation costs decrease to a greater extent.

Institutional changes in one sector of the economy (for example, the formation of an organized bond market with its own rules of the game) can significantly affect the situation in another sector. On the one hand, this is a new source of borrowed funds. But on the other hand, as happened in Russia, it was a factor of underinvestment in the real sector of the economy, since this market was mainly focused on transactions with government securities.

The rise in the cost of the exchange process, due to the inefficient distribution of property rights, which is carried out by the state. This becomes possible because the economic interests of political decision makers conflict with the conditions for ensuring an efficient allocation of resources. At the same time, actions taken by individuals in accordance with the interests of a particular group do not involve significant costs. In particular, this is due to the imperfection of the political market as a result of the impossibility to accurately assess the effectiveness of the work of a particular politician and the compliance of actions with the promises made to voters.

The rapid growth of the variety of goods, along with the complication of a significant part of them, causes an increase in the difficulties associated with measuring the useful properties of goods in various parameters and their further ordering, which is necessary to assess the benefit as a whole.

Therefore, taking into account the last two points, the dynamics of the transaction sector cannot be considered as an unambiguously positive or negative factor in economic growth and, accordingly, in the development of a system of specialization and division of labor. This ambiguity is based, on the one hand, on the distributive aspect of interactions between economic agents, corresponding to the dual nature of institutions, and on the other hand, on the peculiarities of the assessment methodology. So, to the extent that transaction costs turn out to be an exogenous or endogenous variable with respect to institutions, there is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions about the real dynamics of the latter in terms of Pareto optimality or Pareto improvements. The identification problem must first be solved.

This duality is manifested in the special role of the state, which can reduce the level of transaction costs through the specification and protection of property rights, or, on the contrary, increase their level, being an obstacle

for economic growth through the creation of favorable conditions for the distribution activities of organizations

Conclusion

In this chapter, such fundamental concepts for the new institutional economic theory as transaction and transaction costs were considered.

It was shown that any transaction has a rather complex internal structure and differs from a simple exchange of goods. Transactions are diverse, which reflects the diversity of forms of organization of economic activity. We have considered the main characteristics of the pure types of transactions identified by Commons: trade transaction, management transactions and rationing transactions.

Operationalization of the concept of transaction and institution occurs through the inclusion in the systematic analysis of the concept of transaction costs. This chapter has shown that there are different approaches to the definition of this concept, but in any case, transaction costs have a great influence on the efficiency of resource allocation and economic development.

It should be especially noted that the thesis that transaction costs hinder economic development are unproductive is incorrect, if we proceed from the assumption that the analysis is sufficiently realistic. This thesis, at first glance, has the right to exist only if we compare two situations: with zero and positive transaction costs.

Of fundamental importance is not only and even not so much the level of transaction costs, but their structure, distribution among participants in economic exchange, which, in turn, reflects the specific configuration of institutions.

Basic concepts of the chapter

Trust Goods

The costs of identifying alternatives

Contract costs

Measurement costs

Costs of Opportunistic Behavior

Cost of specification and protection of property rights

Benefits under study

Experienced Goods

Trade transaction

Transaction

Ration transaction

Management transaction

Transaction costs

Transformation costs

Review questions

How is a transaction different from the exchange of goods (services)?

What is the form of transaction in which it is possible to comply with the conditions of symmetry of legal relations between counterparties?

What are the features of a trade transaction in contrast to a management transaction?

What are the features of the transaction of management in contrast to transactionation?

What are the features of the rationing transaction from the trading transaction?

What is a Buchanan commodity?

What type of characteristics of goods corresponds to the transformation function?

What type of characteristics of goods does the transaction function correspond to?

Can the distribution of transaction costs among the participants in the exchange affect the total value of these costs?

Name the main institutions used to minimize the costs of identifying alternatives.

What is the difference between researched, experienced and trusted goods?

What are the main ways to reduce the costs of concluding contracts.

Which of the forms of opportunistic behavior (pre-contract or post-contract) is worsening selection?

Which form of opportunistic behavior (pre-contract or post-contract) is moral hazard?

Which of the forms of opportunistic behavior (pre-contract or post-contract) is shirking?

Which of the forms of opportunistic behavior (pre-contract or post-contract) is extortion?

What factors, according to Wallis and North, caused the expansion of the transaction sector of the American economy in the twentieth century?

Questions for reflection

1. "If the total amount of transaction costs, due to the relevant rules of the exchange, is minimal, then its participants can derive the maximum possible benefit from it." Comment on this judgment.

Explain why the listed types of transaction costs cannot be considered as a way to classify them.

List the main factors influencing the level of transaction costs on the New York Stock Exchange in accordance with the Demsetz hypothesis. Explain the direction of action of each of these factors.

"The increase in the share of the transaction sector in GNP is a consequence of a decrease in the efficiency of the economy." Comment on this judgment.

Literature

Main

Akerlof J. (1994), Lemon Market: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism// THESIS,issue 5, p. 91–104.

Williamson O.I. (1996) Economic institutions of capitalism. Firms, markets, relational contracting, St. Petersburg: Lenizdat, p. 97–101.

Additional

Aoki M. (1994) The firm in the Japanese economy. Information, promotion and deal making in the Japanese economy, St. Petersburg: Lenizdat.

Williamson O.I. (1993), Behavioral premises of modern economic analysis// THESIS, vol. 1, no. 3, p. 39–49.

Commons, John R. (1931), Institutional Economics, 21 american economic review, 648–657.

Demsetz, Harold (1968), Cost of Transacting, 81 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 33–53.

Wallis, John J. and North, Douglass C (1986), Measuring the Transaction Sector in the American Economy, 1870–1970, in Long-term factors in American Economic Growth, Stanley Engermann and Robert Gallman (eds.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 95-161.

In economic practice, the term "firm" is used to refer to entities conducting commercial activities. Considering a firm in this aspect, it can be defined as an economic unit that has separate property and formalized rights that allow it to carry out economic activities under its own property responsibility. Although this definition is the most widely used in practice, it reflects the legal aspect of the nature of the firm, without revealing such important aspects from the point of view of economic analysis as the features of the internal organization and the purpose of functioning. The firm is a complex economic phenomenon. It can be both a small enterprise and a large company that combines several enterprises. Therefore, several concepts of the firm have developed in economic theory: neoclassical, neoconstitutional, behavioral, and evolutionary.

The neoclassical theory of the firm considers the firm as a production (technological) unit, whose activity is described by a production function, and the goal is to maximize profits. The main task of the company is seen in finding such a ratio of resources that would provide it with the minimum. In this regard, firm size optimization is postulated as a result of economies of scale. However, the basic premises of the neoclassical interpretation of the firm - the predetermined conditions of activity (perfection of information, complete rationality of behavior, price stability), ignoring the features of the internal organization and the absence of alternatives in the choice of decisions - made it vulnerable to criticism from the standpoint of economic practice.

The institutional theory of the firm proceeds from the fact that the firm is a complex hierarchical structure operating in conditions of market uncertainty. The main task of the analysis is associated with explaining the behavior of a firm in a system of expensive and incomplete information, and the focus is on questions about the reasons for the diversity of types of firms and their development. Using as prerequisites the presence of transaction costs (costs of transactions), as well as the non-price method of resource allocation inherent in the firm, institutional theory defines the firm as an alternative to the market (price) mechanism for transactions (resource management) in order to save transaction costs. This is one of the premises of this theory.

Another premise of the theory of the firm is based on the understanding that, being a complex hierarchical organization, the firm is a set of relationships between resource owners. In this sense, the central aspect of the analysis is the study of the problem of distribution of property rights, and the firm itself is presented as a contract concluded between the owners of resources, designed to ensure the most efficient use of resources. Assignment of powers gives rise to the need for control by the guarantor of the performer, in connection with which the costs of control arise. The firm turns out to be the focus of two types of contracts - external (market), reflecting its interaction with market institutions and associated with transaction costs, as well as internal, reflecting the features of the internal organization of the firm and associated with control costs. Therefore, the firm appears to be an entity that allows optimizing the ratio of transaction costs and control costs in the process of coordinating the decisions of the owners of production resources. The very same ratio of transaction costs and control costs will act as a criterion for determining the size of the firm.

Behavioral theories of the firm focus on the active role of firms in the economy, their ability not only to adapt to a changing market environment, but also to transform this environment. They proceed from the impossibility of maximizing any goal and focus on the study of the functioning of the internal structures of the firm and the problems of decision making. In this regard, we can single out the entrepreneurial concept of the firm, in which the firm is seen as a system of interaction between different levels of manifestation of the entrepreneurial function (management). Having as the main task the consolidation of this function, the behavior of the company is defined as the result of the interaction of different levels of entrepreneurship, and the main issue is reduced to solving the problem of interaction between owners and hired managers.

Another variation of this theory is the evolutionary concept of the firm. Its essence boils down to the fact that the company evolves under the influence of external and internal factors, and decisions are made based on the characteristics of the internal organization and the traditions that have developed in the company. At the same time, the firm does not have a single criterion for the optimal decision-making and its behavior changes depending on the market situation, established traditions and historical experience of the firm.

A common feature of all firms, which are complex hierarchical structures, is the problem of interaction between the owner and hired managers. The "employer-agent" problem arises whenever better-informed and specialized "agents" can use it to their advantage and to the detriment of the owner. It may result in a deviation from the goals of the company, an increase in costs and a decrease in profits. Therefore, the main task of intra-company management is to ensure the uniformity of their goals in the long term, and the condition for its solution is the discipline of the market and the creation of mechanisms that stimulate managers.

A firm is a production unit that operates on the principles of cost optimization in order to maximize profits.

The contract concept of the company

The firm is a set of relationships between employees, managers and owners. These relationships are often expressed in formal agreements - contracts. But even if the relationship is not regulated by a formal contract, there are rules of conduct between the company's employees, employees and managers, between suppliers and consumers of products. These rules of conduct can be seen as informal contracts, since they are quite stable over long periods of time, and their violation causes formal or informal sanctions from other participants.

The firm, as a collection of internal and external contracts, faces two types of costs to enforce them. These are transaction costs (from the word "transaction" - deal, operation, contract) and control costs. Transaction costs are the (explicit and implicit) costs of enforcing external contracts, as opposed to the costs associated with internal contracts - control costs. Transaction costs are the costs of doing business, including the monetary value of the time to find a business partner, to negotiate, to conclude a contract, to ensure that the contract is properly executed. Control costs include the costs of monitoring the performance of internal contracts, as well as losses due to improper performance of contracts. The market and the firm from this point of view are alternative ways of concluding contracts. The market can be thought of as a network of external contracts, and the firm as a network of internal contracts. A firm can buy a product or service on the market through an appropriate agreement with another, external counterparty, but the firm can produce the goods itself using internal contracts with employees. The choice between external and internal contracts depends on the ratio of the costs of their use. The higher the transaction costs relative to the control costs, the more likely it is that the good will be produced by the firm rather than the market.

Transaction costs are especially high compared to control costs in situations where there are opportunities and incentives for opportunistic behavior.

Namely:

* production of a unique product;
* dynamic market with uncertain demand and unpredictable price movements;
* information asymmetry in the market.

The growth of transaction costs due to the inefficiency of external contracts limits the scope of the market. This, in turn, leads to the existence of relatively large firms, for which the problem of external agreement and the possibility of opportunistic behavior is in many cases removed by the development of internal contracts. Now the question arises, why does the market exist if the firm provides savings on transaction costs? Why do we need external contracts at all? With the growth of the company, the number of employees and the fragmentation of the production process grow (a typical example is a conveyor with separate operations), so that the cumulative result of the company's activities turns out to be not the work of one or several employees, as in the pre-industrial era, but of many departments and many employees. As a result, the direct connection between labor and its result, which is characteristic of small-scale production, is lost. And immediately the problem of the “free rider” appears: the reduction in the intensity of the work of one of the workers does not directly affect the total product of the firm and may go unnoticed, and, therefore, tempts workers to work less than their full potential. Self-control of the intensity of labor ceases to serve as a way to increase the efficiency of production; a controlling authority is forced to take its place. The costs of monitoring the degree of intensity of labor (activity) of each production link appear and grow. The larger the firm becomes, the higher these control costs become. Eventually, the costs of enforcing domestic contracts exceed transaction costs, market contracts become more attractive than domestic ones, and domestic contracts are replaced by external ones. The firm as a separate entity of economic activity exists between two types of costs - transaction costs, which determine the lower limit of the firm, its minimum size, and control costs, which set the upper limit, its maximum size.

Costs of Monitoring: The Problem of Tax Evasion

The state actively participates in the economy through the formation of tax policy. Meanwhile, for producers, taxes are essentially transaction costs, evasion of which is a form, or “free rider” behavior. Taxation proceeds are used to produce public goods that everyone enjoys. It turns out that firms that do not pay taxes use the services of the public sector for free, that is, the so-called "free rider" problem arises. The reason for this phenomenon lies in the property of the public good - non-excludability. For example, the protection of property rights in a country presupposes the existence of a large and expensive system of courts, control and authorities, registration authorities, and so on. Its maintenance requires significant costs, which are financed from the state budget. For a firm, the security of its property rights is a valuable asset. But since this system is of a national and universal nature, it is impossible to exclude tax evaders from the number of market entities using it. After all, the police, before presenting protection against robbers to such a company, will not find out whether it has made tax payments on time and correctly.

The causes of the "free rider" problem can be divided into subjective: dishonesty of citizens and objective, which in turn are divided into those related mainly to the taxpayer (individual), and related to the state, that is, with each of the two subjects of relations: public goods - taxes.

Subjective reasons: concealment by taxpayers of true preferences in public goods. Participants in the financing of a public good benefit from lowering their stated need for a public good in order to pay less for it. If the number of consumers is small, then the situation encourages the latter to honestly express their preferences, since false information can lead to underproduction of the good. Conversely, an increase in the number of consumers leads to an increase in the number of hares hoping that the public good will be provided regardless of their contribution.

Objective reasons: the lack of complete information among citizens, the high costs of collecting fees for information about each individual public good in comparison with unified taxation, and a number of other reasons that cause high transaction costs. For example, an individual who is not interested in geology may not know how much it costs to extract uranium, which goes to the production of a nuclear bomb. Therefore, he may unconsciously distort his ideas about the cost of the country's defense.

The taxpayer is most often satisfied with the information provided by the state in the person of active participants in political life: politicians, officials, journalists, public figures. Often, the latter convince individuals of the need to finance public goods in such a way that the marginal cost of its production (that is, taxation) exceeds the marginal benefits received by consumers. Such a phenomenon, when the taxpayer underestimates the opportunity costs of producing public goods, is called the fiscal illusion in the economic literature. Fiscal illusion - "a situation in which the benefits of specific government spending are clearly visible to their recipients, but the same cannot be said about the costs associated with them, which are distributed over time and fall on a large number of people."

Fiscal illusion is often promoted by producers of public goods. Thus, according to a number of economists in Russia, "the balance of power is skewed in favor of ... producers of public goods at the expense of taxpayers and consumers."

Objective reasons: errors in determining the optimal volume of production of public goods, which, as we know from the previous paragraph, is at the intersection of supply and demand for public goods.

Financing of public goods occurs on the basis of collective decisions. But the collective nature of the decision causes less interest in making the decision as effective as possible compared to the private choice. Two points contribute to this: firstly, the position of an individual in the collective decision-making is not of great importance, and secondly, he accounts for a small part of the benefits and costs that are formed in the process of implementing the decision. The more members in the team, the clearer this situation.

The state, regional and municipal authorities that collect taxes, in return, take on a significant part of the transaction costs of society, providing citizens with transactional benefits. It makes sense to identify four main areas of economic activity in which the state is actively involved in the redistribution of the burden of associated transaction costs.

These include:

* contracts,
* measurements,
* protection of existing property relations,
* providing background information.

Contracts. Guaranteeing the execution of contracts concluded in accordance with the law, providing a standard or mandatory (in) form of contracts.

Measurements. Issuance of money as a universal unit of value measurement; providing a system of measures and weights, other state quality standards. First of all, it is the monetary system. Money is the main and colossal element of savings on measurement costs. And only the state can issue them (if everyone starts printing their own money, a situation will arise that is almost equal to the fact that there is no money). Further, it is a system of measures and weights, systems of various standards, which also reduce our measuring costs. In those days when the state did not provide its citizens with institutions to reduce the cost of measurement, the income was up to one third of the cost of the transaction. And this is exactly what he did - he determined the correspondence of measures and weights, various money, etc.

Protection of existing property relations. Guaranteeing correctly registered property using the monopoly apparatus of violence and providing free information about officially existing rules and property rights. Without the state, protecting one's property is extremely expensive and difficult. And so everyone knows that behind your officially registered property or behind the contract that you signed with them and registered with a public notary, there is the power of the state, or rather, the threat to use violence against anyone who dares to encroach on your property or disrupt contract obligations. Guarantees are provided by the presence of a court, a certain armed force (which people who break the law are afraid of), and the law itself - a system of some formal rules. People follow these rules not only because of fear of punishment if they are violated. In 90% of cases, it is simply convenient for them to follow the proposed rules, which, for example, allow partners to predict each other's actions, otherwise the partners would incur huge information costs.

Providing background information. Background information, due to our tax system, we use the least. Only legal information is provided free of charge by the state. The state does not take anything from citizens for the fact that they get acquainted with the laws. They take only those who propagate these laws for us.

Providing economic entities with all the above transactional benefits is associated for the state with significant costs for:

The state apparatus itself (including the Central Bank and the judicial and legal system);
- apparatus of coercion (Ministry of Internal Affairs, etc.);
- provision of information and standards;
- foreign policy, national defense.

Therefore, from the point of view of the state, all these benefits are not free. In order to be able to use them (each separately - free of charge or at a symbolic price), enterprises and individuals must fulfill their obligations to the state: comply with laws and pay taxes.

At the same time, from the point of view of an enterprise or an economic individual, all taxes act as:

A) external costs in relation to its production activities;
b) a condition of access to free transactional benefits provided by the state.

Therefore, an economic entity considers taxes exclusively as transaction costs. Enterprises do not take into account the positive effect of tax collections on the economy as a whole and consider taxes as a cost. With such a formulation of the problem, enterprises are faced with the dilemma of payment evasion and the danger of fines (bribes) from the state. The taxpayer must choose the degree of tax evasion without knowing exactly whether a tax audit will be carried out.

Materials, transportation, etc.), and with the indirect costs associated with this production for collecting and searching for all the information necessary for the activity, concluding various transactions, contracts, agreements, etc.

This term was first introduced by the American economist R. Coase in his work "The Nature of the Firm" in 1937, who later won the Nobel Prize in Economics precisely for the study of transaction costs in 1991.

There are several types of transaction costs. We list the most important of them.

1. Information Search Costs. This refers, first of all, to the costs associated with the search for counterparties of economic and other transactions, as well as the search for the most favorable conditions, in terms of price, sale and purchase. Before concluding the necessary deal, the economic agent collects the information he needs about the counterparty (for example, an insurance company, before insuring your life, will require you to provide a lot of certificates about your health, and will also check their authenticity). Prices for the same good can vary significantly in different markets, and each of us knows that people with lower incomes, before buying the necessary product, first go around several stores and markets in search of a low price.
2. Costs of concluding a business agreement (contract). To conclude the necessary agreement between the parties, the expenditure of money and time is required. For example, you are about to publish a detective novel that you have written. You will need a knowledgeable agent to negotiate with the publisher, so you will need funds to pay for the agent. The negotiations themselves will take some time. And finally, signing the long-awaited contract, as well as a friendly dinner with the publisher, will also be the transaction costs of concluding the contract.
3. Measurement costs. All goods have various properties that bring utility to their owner. For example, you are going to buy a fur coat. Before making a purchase, you need to make sure of the quality of the fur, dyeing, tailoring, etc. A picky buyer, before choosing, will wrinkle the fur, shake the fur coat, try to pull out the pile and maybe even sniff in order to determine the quality of the dressing. In this case, the cost of measurement makes it difficult to buy for those who do not have knowledge about the product. Minimizes the costs of measurement such a property as a trademark (brand) of a well-known company, but in this case, no one is immune from forgery. Measurement costs are also associated with the purchase of measuring equipment (calculators, scales, dosimeters, cash registers, etc.).
4. Cost of specification and protection of property rights. It can be noted that any specification, as well as the protection of property rights, is associated with an accurate definition of the object or subject of ownership, law enforcement agencies, the functioning of the judicial system, etc. As a striking example, consider the activities of many private small businesses in the recent past of Russia. In fact, the right of private property of any firm should be protected by the state, as in any civilized country in the world with a developed market economy. But, if for some reason the state does not cope with this task in full, then private business resorts to alternative means of protecting its property. In other words, firms resort to searching for so-called "roofs" that perform security functions for a fee.
5. Costs of Opportunistic Behavior. Those. costs associated with dishonesty and deceit, concealment of information that economic agents may encounter in their activities. For example, revealing the punishment of a dishonest counterparty that violates the terms of the contract entails considerable costs. Costs are also required to protect oneself from such opportunistic behavior. For example, in currency exchange offices and cash desks of many financial and credit institutions there are special devices for detecting counterfeit banknotes. Honey connoisseurs, when buying it, without fail check it with a special chemical pencil. Dipping a pencil into honey, a person looks at the reaction: when stained in purple, it can be concluded that the honey is not real.

Transaction costs permeate the entire sphere of the economic life of society. We all face similar costs at every turn, sometimes without realizing it. Scientists often compare transaction costs in economics and friction in physics, drawing an analogy between them. The American economist D. Stigler wrote that “ the surrounding world with no transaction costs is as strange as the physical world with no frictional forces". R. Coase argued that if all the types of transaction costs listed above are suddenly absent, then nothing can interfere with the completion of transactions (transactions) and, as a result, eternity will be lived in a matter of fractions of a second. Exchange transactions would take place instantly, because not the slightest fraction of resources would be spent on the search for this or that information.

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