Book Review: the Theory of Transaction in Institutional Economics: a History, by Massimiliano Vatiero

Abstract

The central contention of The Theory of Transaction in Institutional Economics is that the failure to settle on the meaning of transaction costs reflects a misplaced attention on costs, specifically, that “the root of the vagueness surrounding the notion of transaction costs can be attributed not to the meaning of cost (economists have a consolidated literature on that), but to the lack of a clear-cut definition of ‘transaction.’” With this book, Professor Vatiero aims to address this neglect by, first, reviewing uses of the concept of transaction in institutionalist scholarship and, then, developing a system for characterizing transactions.

Keywords: transaction costs, history of economic thought

JEL Classification: B00, D23