Knowledge and Organisation in Economics and Economic Systems: A Research Tradition

The emergence and delayed influence of Coase's ideas demonstrate the role of unpredictability and path dependence in the creation of knowledge and the recognition of its implications. Coase's approach to the operation of firms and markets was not readily accommodated in a theoretical vision of microeconomics that focused on allocative efficiency at the expense of knowledge creation, and therefore on increasing returns as a property of a production function instead of a self‐sustaining process in which multiple forms of organisation generate new possibilities. Coase's ideas have a natural, if underexploited, connection with those of Smith, Marshall, Young, Richardson and Penrose. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.