Business groups in all of their manifestations are informational mechanisms for coordinating complementary activities -- for "gap filling." This is well known in the literature on business groups outside the Anglo-American sphere. Especially in developing economies, where markets are thin and institutions (including both political institutions and what I call market-supporting institutions) are weak or non-existent, coordination is often more cheaply undertaken within the boundaries of business groups organized as financial pyramids, typically under family control. These organizations are intimately linked to the coalition of territorial rulers that North and his coauthors (2009) call a natural state; and, indeed, such business groups are arguably themselves examples of a natural state, in that they represent a self-enforcing coalition with its own rules, norms, and mechanisms of enforcement. But even in ÈdevelopedÉ economies, novelty and change create the sorts of gaps that call for business groups in the widest sense, including less-formal sets of "intermediate" relationships, as, for example, in industrial districts. In this sense, the economics of organization generally has perhaps more to learn from the literature on business groups than the other way around.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Connecticut, Department of Economics in its series Working papers with number
2009-23.
Length: 38 pages Date of creation: Jul 2009 Date of revision: Publication status: Forthcoming in Asli M. Colpan, Takashi Hikino, and James R. Lincoln, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Business Groups. Oxford: Oxford University Press, in preparation. Handle: RePEc:uct:uconnp:2009-23
Note: Paper presented at the Kyoto International Conference "Evolutionary Dynamics of Business Groups in Emerging Economies," November 26-28, 2007, Kyoto University and Doshisha University Contact details of provider: Postal: University of Connecticut 341 Mansfield Road, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063 Phone: (860) 486-4889 Fax: (860) 486-4463 Web page: http://www.econ.uconn.edu/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christian Zimmermann).