Comments on: Coase’s law – craze for collaboration explained

By: alan p

alan p — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 22:19:15 +0000

In the late 90′s Brian Arthur (and some other guys at the Santa Fe institute) did quite a bit of thinking on the economics of “increasing returns” (aka +ve feedback loops ) – another part of webonomics, more recently Eric Beinhocker wrote a magnum opus on this too.

By: nic

nic — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:57:53 +0000

Thanks Alan. Wikinomics is definitely on the ra ra side. You’ve got to find a way to believe though, right?

By: nic

nic — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:57:00 +0000

Thanks Alan. Wikinomics is definitely on the ra ra side. You’ve got to find a way to believe though, right?

By: alan p

alan p — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:15:36 +0000

Nic, quite a lot of the thinking / modelling in Web 1.0 was driven by Coase’s thinking (the disintegrating corporation, clover leaf career etc etc was a common mid 90′s thingy).

Turned out that a transaction is often far more than just the search / find bit…there is a whole dance around trust (in the broadest sense – can you deliver / are you honest / will you survive / can I sue you / etc ) that also comes into play.

Wikinomics as a book – imho – is too much on the “rah rah” stuff and a bit light on the “cynic” parts of overall transaction economics eg agency theory, asymmetric market theory etc etc.

You just have to look at Wikipedia, Digg etc to see how these more cynical sides of transaction games are played

By: alan p

alan p — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:15:00 +0000

Nic, quite a lot of the thinking / modelling in Web 1.0 was driven by Coase’s thinking (the disintegrating corporation, clover leaf career etc etc was a common mid 90′s thingy).

Wikinomics as a book – imho – is too much on the “rah rah” stuff and a bit light on the “cynic” parts of overall transaction economics eg agency theory, asymmetric market theory etc etc.

You just have to look at Wikipedia, Digg etc to see how these more cynical sides of transaction games are played