Among the costs that economics deals with, we must distinguish between two types of costs:

• transformation costs (technology costs);
• transaction costs.

Transformation costs are the costs that accompany the process of physically changing the material, as a result of which we get a product that has a certain value.

Transformation costs also include certain elements of measurement and planning. They are usually ignored or referred to as transaction costs, while they may be pure technology.

Transaction costs are costs that ensure the transfer of property rights from one hand to another and the protection of these rights. Unlike transformation costs, transaction costs are not related to the value creation process itself.

Forms of transaction costs

Transaction costs (transaction costs -transactioncosts) are the costs in the area associated with the transfer of . The category of transaction costs was introduced into economics in the 1930s. Ronald Coase and is now widely used. In his article "The Nature of the Firm" he defined transaction costs as operating costs.

Consider the possible alternatives provided to us by everyday life. A typical example is apartment renovation. You can do it yourself if you know how and if you have an interest in it. Or you can organize the whole process by hiring workers from the market for each specific operation, buying paint and calculating how much it is needed, etc. In this case, you are trying to get into a series of transactions that will be purely market and exclude your interaction with by one firm. After all you do not trust the company in advance, believing that it has its own interest, and you will make repairs cheaper. However, if you are a busy or wealthy person, you hire a company to renovate your apartment, because your opportunity cost of time is higher than the cost that you spend on organizing this process. This is most often associated with wealth effect"- "wealth effect". For the first time this term was also introduced by Coase. In his theory, the concept of "transaction costs" is opposed to the concept of "agency costs", and the choice between one or another type of costs is largely determined by the "wealth effect".

Currently, transaction costs are understood by the vast majority of scientists integrally, as the costs of the functioning of the system. Transaction costs are the costs that arise when individuals exchange their property rights under conditions of incomplete information or confirm them under the same conditions. When people exchange property rights they enter into a contract. When they confirm their ownership, they do not enter into any contractual relationship (they already have it), but they protect it from attacks by third parties. They are afraid that their property rights will be infringed by a third party, so they spend resources on protecting these rights (for example, building a fence, maintaining the police, etc.).

Generally, there are five main forms of transaction costs:

• information search costs;
• the costs of negotiating and concluding contracts;
• measurement costs;
• costs of specification and protection of property rights;
• costs of opportunistic behavior.

Information Search Costs associated with its asymmetric distribution in the market: it takes time and money to search for potential buyers or sellers. The incompleteness of the available information turns into additional costs associated with the purchase of goods at prices above equilibrium (or sale below equilibrium), with losses arising from the purchase of substitute goods.

The cost of negotiating and concluding contracts also require time and resources. The costs associated with negotiating the terms of sale, legal registration of the transaction, often significantly increase the price of the item being sold.

A significant part of transaction costs are measurement costs, which is connected not only with the direct costs of measuring equipment and the measurement process itself, but also with the errors that inevitably arise in this process. In addition, for a number of goods and services, only indirect or ambiguous measurement is allowed. How, for example, to evaluate the qualifications of a hired employee or the quality of a purchased car? Certain savings are caused by the standardization of manufactured products, as well as the guarantees provided by the company (free warranty repairs, the right to exchange defective products for good ones, etc.). However, these measures cannot completely eliminate the costs of measurement.

Especially great costs of specification and protection of property rights. In a society where there is no reliable legal protection, cases of constant violation of rights are not uncommon. The time and money required to restore them can be extremely high. This should also include the costs of maintaining the judicial and state bodies that are on guard of law and order.

Costs of Opportunistic Behavior are also related to, although not limited to, information asymmetry. The point is that post-contract behavior is very difficult to predict. Dishonest individuals will comply with the terms of the contract at a minimum or even evade their implementation (if sanctions are not provided). Such moral hazard always exists. It is especially great in conditions of joint work - team work, when the contribution of each cannot be clearly separated from the efforts of other team members, especially if the potential capabilities of each are completely unknown. So, opportunistic called the behavior of an individual who evades the terms of a contract in order to profit at the expense of partners. It can take the form of extortion or blackmail when the role of those team members who cannot be replaced by others becomes obvious. Using their relative advantages, such team members may demand special conditions of work or pay for themselves, blackmailing others with the threat of leaving the team.

Thus, transaction costs arise before the exchange process (ex ante), during the exchange process and after it (ex post). The deepening division of labor and the development of specialization contribute to the growth of transaction costs. Their value also depends on the dominant form of ownership in society. There are three main forms of ownership: private, common (communal) and state. Let's consider them from the point of view of the theory of transaction costs.

Paul R. Milgrom and John Roberts proposed the following classification of transaction costs. They divide them into two categories, coordination costs and motivational costs.

• Costs of defining contract details— a market survey to determine what can generally be bought on the market.
• Costs of defining contracts— studying the conditions of partners who supply the necessary services or goods.
• Direct Coordination Costs— the need to create a structure within which the parties are brought together.

• Costs associated with incomplete information. The limited information about the market can lead to a refusal to complete a transaction (acquisition of a good). This is due to the fact that the level of uncertainty can become so high that people prefer to refuse a transaction rather than spend energy on obtaining additional information.
• The cost of opportunism. These costs are associated with overcoming possible opportunistic behavior, with overcoming the partner’s dishonesty towards you, and lead to the fact that you hire an overseer, or try to find and put into the contract some additional measures of your partner’s effectiveness.

O. Williamson tried to evaluate all transactions by transaction frequency and asset specificity.

1. One-time or elementary exchange on an anonymous market.

An example of a one-time purchase would be buying a teapot in the market. Having bought one kettle, you will buy the next one only when this one breaks. In this case, there are no specific assets, but the fact is that the seller does not care who to sell the teapot to. Price is the only determining factor here.

2. Repeated exchange of bulk goods.

There is still no asset specificity. For example, when you buy bread from the same seller all the time, you know that it is of good quality, and therefore you do not spend money on an additional assessment of whether the bread is good for you, what kind of bread is in other bakeries, etc. This is very important, because in this way you significantly save on the costs of searching, on the costs of measuring the quality of bread, and your behavior gives the seller greater confidence in turnover (that he will sell bread).

3. Recurring contract associated with investments in specific assets.

What are "Special Assets"? A specific asset is always created for a specific transaction. Let's say I built a building to be used as a workshop. I can, of course, use it alternatively, but then I will suffer losses. Those. even the next best opportunity after the best use of this asset brings much less income and is associated with risk. Specific assets are those costs, the next use of which is much less profitable.

4. Investments in idosyncratic (unique, exclusive) assets.

Idiosyncratic asset is an asset that, in alternative use (when it is withdrawn from a given transaction), loses its value altogether, or its value becomes negligible. These assets include half of production investments - investments in a specific technological process. For example, a built blast furnace, except for its intended purpose, can no longer be used. Even if climbing competitions are held on it, it will not pay even 1% of the cost of its construction. In this case, the asset is idiosyncratic, i.e. tied to a particular technology.

There are various classifications of transaction costs in the economic literature. It should be noted that there was no generally accepted classification of transaction costs, each of the researchers paid attention to the most interesting, from his point of view, elements. J. Stigler, Alchian singled out among them "information costs", Levy - the costs of exploiting the state system; O. Williamson? costs of opportunistic behavior; M. Milgrom and J. Roberts - influence costs; and Jensen and Meckling are agency costs.

Here another problem of the theory of transaction costs manifested itself: in some cases, some economists began to reduce the whole variety of transaction costs to any particular manifestation of them. Most often in theoretical works there is an identification of transaction and information costs. Of course, information costs are key to understanding the nature of transaction costs, since the acquisition and processing of information for subsequent transactions is very important, if not decisive. This allowed some economists (for example, Dalman) to argue that "one can speak of only one type of transaction costs - the loss of resources due to imperfect information" . Even such a prominent scholar as Alchian tended to equate transaction and information costs. However, the information costs associated with searching, processing information, monitoring, etc. the whole set of transaction costs is not exhausted, since it is obvious that there are such costs for conducting transactions, such as the costs of protecting property rights, the costs of enforcing contracts, the costs of measurement, etc.

Within the framework of modern neo-institutional economic theory, a variety of approaches to the systematization of transactional

costs, including:

• - North-Eggertsson's classification, in which transaction costs are actually divided according to the stages of their occurrence in contractual relations;
• - Milgrom-Roberts classification, which is based on the division of the system of transaction costs into two main categories: transaction costs associated with coordination and costs associated with motivation;
• - Menard's classification, based on four main factors that determine the costs of transactions.

This list can also be supplemented by Williamson's typology, which, strictly speaking, is a systematization of the transactions themselves according to their frequency and asset specificity. O. Williamson shares transaction costs ex ante and ex post - arising before and after the conclusion of the transaction. The general classification of transaction costs is given in table 2.

Table 2 - Classification of transaction costs according to Williamson

Among domestic scientists, one can note the classification proposed by R. Kapelyushnikov, where the following division of transaction costs is made according to the external signs of the activity to which they relate:

• 1. Costs of information search (the costs of searching and acquiring information before concluding a transaction, this also includes losses caused by information imperfections);
• 2. The costs of negotiating (costs for the preparation and execution of the contract, negotiations);
• 3. Cost of measurement (the cost of evaluating the characteristics of a product or service);
• 4. Costs of specification and protection of property rights (legal costs, costs necessary to restore violated rights, as well as losses from their poor specification and unreliable protection);
• 5. Costs of opportunistic behavior (costs due to the mismatch of interests of economic agents).

This classification takes into account the costs of using the market mechanism for coordinating people's activities, or "market transaction costs". However, transaction costs are present at other levels as well.

The classification of costs in terms of their clear separation depending on the segment in which transactions occur is given, in particular, in the work of Furubotn and Richter (Table 3) .

Table 3 - Classification of transaction costs

The class of "market transaction costs" here includes the typical costs of using the market mechanism; into the class of "administrative transaction costs"? costs associated with the exercise of the right to give orders within the firm (costs of creating, maintaining or changing organizational design, including the costs of personnel management, protection against takeovers, investments in information technology, public relations and lobbying; and costs of operating the organization, which include information costs for "making decisions, monitoring the execution of orders, measuring the performance of employees", etc.

Does Furubotn and Richter single out the costs associated "with the operation and adjustment of the institutional state" in the last class of transaction costs? "political transaction costs". Such costs, by their definition, are "in a general sense the costs of creating public goods through collective action" and include such costs for the implementation of public functions, such as the costs of seeking information, decision-making, monitoring and enforcement of laws; the costs associated with the activities of political parties, the establishment of legal frameworks, which in general can be described as the costs of creating, maintaining and changing the formal and informal political system.

Inclusion in the analysis of not only market, but also other aspects of transactions is necessary, since research and planning of activities is impossible without taking into account the totality of existing factors.

Thus, there is no unity in the concept of transaction costs and in their classification representation in science today.

There are more complex definitions of transaction costs and their classification. But in most modern studies in the field of institutional economics, the term "transaction costs" is used in the sense proposed by Williamson O. It is all costs in all transactions that occur both within the firm and in the market.

To prove the right to the existence of the main provisions of neo-institutional economic theory, of which he is rightly considered the founder, this is enough.

A significant number of types of classifications of transaction costs is a consequence of the plurality of approaches to the study of this problem. O. Williamson distinguishes between two types of transaction costs: ex ante and ex post. to costs like ex ante includes the costs of drafting an agreement and negotiating it. type costs ex post include organizational and operational costs associated with the use of the management structure; costs arising from poor adaptation; costs of litigation arising in the course of adjusting contractual relations to unforeseen circumstances; costs associated with the fulfillment of contractual obligations.

The most famous domestic typology of transaction costs is the classification proposed by R. Kapelyushnikov :

1. Information Search Costs. Before a deal is made or a contract is concluded, it is necessary to have information about where to find potential buyers and sellers of the relevant goods and factors of production, what are the current prices. The costs of this kind are made up of the time and resources required to conduct the search, as well as the losses associated with the incompleteness and imperfection of the acquired information.

2. The cost of negotiating. The market requires the diversion of significant funds for negotiations on the terms of the exchange, for the conclusion and execution of contracts. The main tool for saving this kind of costs is standard (standard) contracts.

3. Measurement costs. Any product or service is a set of characteristics. In the act of exchange, only some of them are inevitably taken into account, and the accuracy of their assessment (measurement) is extremely approximate. Sometimes the qualities of a product of interest are not measurable at all, and to evaluate them one has to use surrogates (for example, to judge the taste of apples by their color). This includes the costs of the appropriate measuring equipment, the actual measurement itself, the implementation of measures designed to protect the parties from measurement errors and, finally, the losses from these errors. Measurement costs increase with increasing accuracy requirements.

Huge savings in measurement costs have been achieved by mankind as a result of the invention of standards for weights and measures. In addition, such forms of business practices as warranty repairs, company labels, purchasing batches of goods from samples, etc. are driven by the goal of saving these costs.

Measurement costs are affected by which product group the product belongs to in terms of perception:

STUDYED products (Search Product)- consumer characteristics (attributes) of such products can be quite simply compared with the corresponding attributes of other products, quantitatively measured. The demand for such goods depends on the external information that the buyer has. Consumer preference for a product can be formed before the purchase of the product. The demand for such goods becomes much more elastic when substitute goods with better consumer characteristics appear on the market.

EXPERIENCE PRODUCTS- the attributes of goods can only be evaluated after they have been purchased and consumed. Example: food, the quality of a musical concert.

TRUST products (Credence Product)- the attributes of a product cannot be fully appreciated even after they have been purchased and consumed. It takes a lot of time to evaluate them. The basis for the consumer choice of such goods is the trust in the seller of goods, the trade mark (Brand Name) and the public image of the manufacturer. Example: paid educational or medical services.

4. Cost of specification and protection of property rights. This category includes the costs of maintaining courts, arbitration, state bodies, the time and resources required to restore violated rights, as well as losses from their poor specification and unreliable protection. Some authors (D. North) add here the costs of maintaining a consensus ideology in society, since educating members of society in the spirit of observing generally accepted unwritten rules and ethical norms is a much more economical way to protect property rights than formalized legal control.

5. Costs of Opportunistic Behavior. This is the most hidden and, from the point of view of economic theory, the most interesting element of transaction costs.

There are two main forms of opportunistic behavior. The first one is called moral hazard. Moral hazard arises when one party relies on the other in a contract, and obtaining valid information about its behavior requires high costs or is impossible at all. The most common type of opportunistic behavior of this kind is shirking, when the agent works with less output than required by the contract.

Particularly favorable soil for shirking is created in the conditions of joint work by the whole group. For example, how to highlight the personal contribution of each employee to the overall result of the activities of the “team” of a factory or government agency? We have to use surrogate measurements and, say, judge the productivity of many workers not by the result, but by the costs (like the duration of work), but these indicators often turn out to be inaccurate.

If the personal contribution of each agent to the overall result is measured with large errors, then his reward will be weakly related to the actual efficiency of his work. Hence the negative incentives that encourage shirking.

Special complex and expensive structures are created in private firms and government agencies, whose tasks include monitoring the behavior of agents, detecting cases of opportunism, imposing penalties, etc. Reducing the costs of opportunistic behavior is the main function of a significant part of the administrative apparatus of various organizations.

The second form of opportunistic behavior is extortion. Opportunities for it appear when several production factors work in close cooperation for a long time and get used to each other so much that each becomes irreplaceable, unique for the rest of the group. This means that if some factor decides to leave the group, then the other participants in the cooperation will not be able to find an equivalent replacement for it on the market and will suffer irreparable losses. Therefore, the owners of unique (in relation to a given group of participants) resources have the opportunity for blackmail in the form of a threat to leave the group. Even when “extortion” remains only a possibility, it always comes with real losses. (The most radical form of protection against extortion is the transformation of interdependent (interspecific) resources into jointly owned property, the integration of property in the form of a single bundle of powers for all team members).

Paul R. Milgrom(Poul R. Milgrom) and John Roberts (John Roberts) proposed the following classification of transaction costs. They divide them into two categories, coordination costs and motivational costs.

Coordination costs:

1. The cost of determining the details of the contract. Basically, it's a market survey to determine what's available to buy in the market before you narrow down your approach to anything specific.

2. Costs of identifying partners. This is the study of partners who supply the desired services or goods (their locations, their ability to fulfill a given contract, their prices, etc.).

3. Costs of direct coordination. What does this mean in terms of market exchange? On the collective farm market, these costs are approximately equal to the fact that you got to the market and walked around the ranks, i.e. there is no significant induced cost in this case. And as for a complex contract, here there is a need to create a structure within which the parties are brought together. This structure represents, for example, the interests of the customer and ensures the negotiation process.

Motivational costs(i.e., the costs associated with the choice process: to enter or not to enter into a given transaction):

4. Costs associated with incomplete information. The limited information about the market can lead to a refusal to complete a transaction, from acquiring a good. A classic example of a refusal to make a decision as a result of incomplete information is the current liquidation of the stock market in Russia. People do not know whether it will exist, what will be the fate of enterprises (maybe they will be nationalized again). Those. the level of uncertainty becomes so high that people prefer to refuse transactions rather than spend energy on obtaining additional information.

5. Costs associated with opportunism. They are especially frequent within the firm, but also appear in market contracts. The costs associated with overcoming possible opportunistic behavior, with overcoming the partner’s dishonesty towards you, lead to the fact that you either hire an overseer, or try to find and put into the contract some additional measures of your partner’s efficiency, etc.

Let us now turn to the classification of transaction costs by Douglas North and Thrinn Eggertson. It was first proposed by North and clearly formulated by Eggertson in his book Economic Behavior and Institutions. According to North and Eggertson, transaction costs consist of the following:

search costs;

Negotiation costs;

Contract drafting costs;

Monitoring costs;

Enforcement costs;

The cost of protecting property rights.

1) Search costs.

There are four types of costs associated with search:

Acceptable price;

Qualitative information about available goods and services;

Qualitative information about sellers;

Quality customer information.

Quantitative information about sellers and buyers in the first two positions has already been given.

Qualitative information about sellers and buyers is understood as information about their behavior - are they honest, how do they fulfill their obligations, in what circumstances are they (maybe one of them is on the verge of collapse or, on the contrary, is flourishing);

2) Negotiation costs.

In the market sense, you are trading to minimize costs. If you are an individual (and not a firm) trading with someone in the market, you waste time saying that it is dear to you, that you have little money, implying that you are an excellent target for price discrimination policy, turn around, leave, defiantly approach another stall.

Your costs as a firm in the negotiation process can be very significant if you organize a tender. For example, the European Commission charges the tender agency 15% of the transaction amount. However, the cost will not necessarily be great if you manage to buy someone in the camp of the "enemy" in order to find out the partner's reserve position. To do this, in our conditions, with a low economic culture and low stamina, sometimes it is enough to take your partner's representative to a good restaurant, and at dinner he will simply let it slip. The same way of obtaining information is very often used in the West.

3) The cost of drawing up the contract.

These are your expenses for the text of the contract to record how your partner will behave in certain cases (foreseen by you) and how external circumstances will develop. And in relation to cases that you did not foresee, a certain mechanism is usually formulated in the contract.

For example, it is established: if we do not agree, we will be judged by the Stockholm International Arbitration Court (the usual instance for international contracts). Those. a certain position is specially reserved for unforeseen circumstances.

4) Monitoring costs.

Items 1-3 referred to activities prior to the existence of a legal contract). And from point 4, when such a contract has already appeared, activities begin after its appearance. And it begins with monitoring the execution of the contract by each of the counterparties.

For example, having bought a car, you can repair it during the warranty period at the expense of the seller at a service station - these will be the monitoring costs when purchasing a car. And after the warranty period has expired, some monitoring can also take place, but not within the framework of the first transaction (it has already been completed), but in the case when you want to continue relations with this supplier in order to buy another from him again in a 5-year perspective car.

Another example. The classic example of manufacturer monitoring comes from the automotive industry. You can regularly read that, say, Ford has recalled all its models of such and such model years. Those. the company, in an effort not to lose its name and position in the market, itself monitors cases of severe accidents, tracking how its products work, which is associated with considerable costs for it.

5) The cost of enforcement.

This is the cost of forcing the other party to fulfill the terms of the contract. Since people seek to act in their own interests, and information is (by definition) incomplete, situations often arise when the contract is not fulfilled partially or completely. It is assumed that there is a system that forces partners to comply with the terms of the contract. First of all, the state is such a system, and also, to some extent, professional associations and the private legal system. The latter interacts with the previous two, complementing them. But there is also an alternative system of coercion that arises in a weak state and competes with it.

This is a private enforcement system (not to be confused with the aforementioned private legal system). This includes the mafia, all kinds of "roofs", etc.

We emphasize that the lion's share of the costs of enforcement of contracts in normal civilized economies is free for economic agents. These are the costs of the state, and it saves on scale. After all, it is expensive for each of us to a) look for, b) constantly maintain (when he is still needed!) A bailiff or "a man with a gun." The state, taking into account that such cases regularly occur, maintains arbitration courts, ordinary criminal courts, and a system of threats of violence - the prison system, the system of judicial agents, etc. Naturally, the system of coercion is financed to a large extent by the state (at the expense taxes, roughly speaking, since there is no free state). And a society that saves on taxes is forced to spend money on an alternative system of enforcement (a system of private justice), which is extremely inefficient and very expensive. Therefore, if the contract is not protected (if you can be deceived), you will most likely prefer not to enter into it.

The ineffectiveness of the alternative system of coercion is due, in particular, to the high competition between bandits. Let's say you "stand under a certain roof", and they took it and shot it. Those. you have no guarantees that the “roof” you choose will work reliably. Its effectiveness at the micro level is higher, but in the long run it is much lower than that of the police. In Russia, an alternative system of enforcement can only exist in very highly profitable sectors - in wholesale and retail trade, in the service sector of the "new Russians". But no one will even think of putting a "roof" over the system of selling pies at school, because this is not justified, from the point of view of the bandits.

6) The cost of protecting property rights.

This is the only static form of transaction costs, as opposed to the dynamic costs associated with securing contracts.

For example, you planted potatoes 100 km from Moscow for your own consumption, and not for sale, but the homeless are digging them up. You either stack up with your neighbors and hire a man with a gun loaded with salt to guard you, or you refuse to plant potatoes at all, or you lose up to 60% of the crop. Both of these are specific, either positive or negative, transaction costs associated with the costs of protecting property rights. In certain cases, such costs are associated with protection from offenders, and then this is the function of the state. In about the same number of cases, this kind of cost is due to precautions against the state. In Russia, up to 50% of transactions are not entirely legal (the so-called "gray") character. The classic examples of this type of transaction cost in our economy are bribes to the tax inspector, and if possible, also to the tax police, so that they turn a blind eye to certain aspects of your economic activity, as well as bribes to customs officers.

Coase theorem

The theorem is devoted to the problem external effects (externalities). This is the name of the by-products of any activity that relates not to its direct participants, but to third parties. Examples negative externalities: smoke from a factory chimney that others are forced to breathe, pollution of rivers by sewage, etc.

Examples positive externalities: a private flower garden and a lawn that passers-by can admire, paving streets by private individuals at their own expense, etc. The existence of externalities leads to a discrepancy between private and social costs (according to the formula: social costs are equal to the sum of private and external, i.e., imposed on third parties persons). In the case of negative externalities, private costs are lower than social ones; in the case of positive externalities, on the contrary, social costs are lower than private ones.

The Coase Theorem states: "If property rights are well defined and transaction costs are zero, then the allocation of resources (production structure) will remain unchanged and efficient regardless of changes in the distribution of property rights."

Transaction costs are zero, which means:

1. Everyone knows and they learn new things instantly and unambiguously. Everyone understands each other perfectly, that is, no words are needed.

2. Everyone always has consistent expectations and interests with everyone. When the conditions change, the agreement is instantaneous. Any opportunistic behavior is excluded.

3. Each product or resource corresponds to a set of interchangeable ones.

Under these conditions, “the initial distribution of property rights does not affect the structure of production at all, since in the end each of the rights will be in the hands of the owner who is able to offer the highest price for it on the basis of the most efficient use of this right.”

The theorem was proved by Coase on a number of examples, partly conditional, partly taken from real life.

Imagine that there is an agricultural farm and a cattle ranch in the neighborhood, and the rancher's cows can enter the farmer's fields, causing damage to crops. If the rancher is not responsible for this, his private costs will be less than the social ones. It would seem that there is every reason for state intervention. However, Coase argues otherwise: if the law permits the farmer and rancher to enter into voluntary agreements about injury, then government intervention is not required; everything will resolve itself.

Let us assume that the optimal production conditions under which both participants achieve the maximum welfare are as follows: the farmer harvests 10 centners of grain from his plot, and the rancher fattens 10 cows. But the rancher decides to get another, eleventh cow. The net income from it will be 50 dollars. At the same time, this will lead to an excess of the optimal load on the pasture and inevitably there will be a threat of grass loss for the farmer. This extra cow would result in the loss of one quintal of grain, which would have given the farmer $60 in net income.

Let's consider the first case: the farmer has the right to prevent poisoning. Then he will demand compensation from the cattle breeder, no less than 60 dollars. And the profit from the eleventh cow is only $50. Conclusion: the rancher will refuse to increase the herd and the production structure will remain the same (and therefore effective) - 10 centners of grain and 10 head of cattle.

In the second case, the rights are distributed so that the rancher is not responsible for the injury. However, the farmer still has the right to offer compensation to the rancher for refusing to raise an additional cow. The ransom, according to Coase, will range from $50 (the rancher's profit from the eleventh cow) to $60 (the farmer's profit from the tenth centner of corn). With such compensation, both participants will benefit, and the rancher will again refuse to raise a "non-optimal" unit of cattle. The structure of production will not change.

Coase's final conclusion is this: both in the case when the farmer has the right to demand compensation from the rancher, and in the case when the right of grass remains with the rancher (i.e., in any distribution of property rights), the outcome is the same: the rights still pass to the side that values ​​them higher (in this case, to the farmer), and the structure of production remains unchanged and efficient. Coase himself writes the following on this subject: “If all rights were clearly defined and prescribed, if transaction costs were zero, if people agreed to adhere firmly to the results of voluntary exchange, then there would be no externalities.” “Market failures” would not have occurred under these conditions, and the state would have had no reason to intervene to correct the market mechanism.

Several important theoretical and practical conclusions follow from the Coase theorem.

First, it reveals the economic meaning of property rights. According to Coase, externalities (i.e., discrepancies between private and social costs and benefits) appear only when property rights are not clearly defined, blurred. When rights are clearly defined, then all externalities are "internalized" (external costs become internal). It is no coincidence that the main field of conflicts in connection with external effects are resources that move from the category of unlimited to the category of rare ones (water, air) and for which there were no property rights in principle before.

Secondly, the Coase theorem deflects accusations of “failures” on the market. The way to overcome externalities is through the creation of new property rights in areas where they were not clearly defined. Therefore, externalities and their negative consequences are generated by defective legislation; if anyone "fails" here, it is the state. The Coase Theorem essentially removes the standard accusations of environmental destruction leveled against the market and private property. The opposite conclusion follows from it: it is not excessive, but insufficient development of private property that leads to the degradation of the external environment.

Thirdly, the Coase theorem reveals the key importance of transaction costs. When they are positive, the distribution of property rights ceases to be a neutral factor and begins to influence the efficiency and structure of production.

Fourth, the Coase theorem shows that references to externalities are not sufficient grounds for government intervention. In the case of low transaction costs, it is unnecessary; in the case of high transaction costs, it is by no means always economically justified. After all, the actions of the state are themselves associated with positive transaction costs, so the treatment may well be worse than the disease itself.

1. Define transaction costs.

2. What is the classification of transactions by J. Commons? Williamson's concept of transaction?

3. Name and describe the main types of asset specificity, transaction parameters.

4. What is fundamental transformation?

5. What is the meaning of approaches to the definition of transaction costs. Describe the costs of operating the market mechanism and the costs of intercompany transactions.

6. Name the main factors of transaction costs.

7. What is the North-Eggertsson classification of transaction costs? Milgrom-Roberts classification.

Classifications of transaction costs.

T. Eggertsson's classification.

This list of costs is one of the most popular, although it is not divided into blocks, like the classifications described below.

1. Costs of searching for information about prices and quality of goods, as well as about potential buyers or sellers.

This type of costs is divided into four types associated with the search for a) a favorable price, b) adequate information about existing products, c) adequate information about sellers, d) adequate information about buyers.

2. Costs of identifying reserve positions at endogenous prices.

This type of cost is also usually associated with negotiating, since the purpose of negotiations is to get as close as possible to the partner's reserve price. The reserve price is the marginal price that the partner can agree to, i.e. the bid price for the buyer (the highest price for him) and the offer price for the seller (the minimum price for him).

3. Contract drafting costs.

The main goal in drawing up a contract is to determine what circumstances may take place in the future and what should be the reaction to them from both parties. In addition, it usually provides for a structure that will have to deal with the settlement of disputes.

4. The costs of monitoring the fulfillment of the terms of the contract.

Due to the diverging interests of the parties to the contract, each of them may have an incentive to varying degrees to act contrary to the contractual agreement. As a result, there is a need to control each other. In addition, each party can control itself in order to maintain its reputation. An example here is a manufacturer's recall of its products from the market upon receipt of information about its inadequate quality.

5. The costs of coercion to fulfill the terms of the contract.

This type of costs, first of all, is borne by the state, in particular, the judicial and law enforcement systems, and then these costs include taxes. If the state is ineffective in protecting contracts, its functions are performed by alternative structures, for example, private security firms or criminal gangs.

6. The cost of protecting property rights from encroachment by a third party.

The purpose of any transaction is to obtain some benefit for both parties. However, these benefits may also be sought by individuals or groups outside the contract, such as the state, criminal gangs, or crooks. Thus, there is a need to protect newly emerging property rights. These costs may include taxes, bribes to officials, tribute to roofs, etc.

Classification by P. Milgrom and J. Robberts.

This classification has a deeper theoretical content, since it is not only a list of costs, but also their division into groups based on certain criteria. One of these criteria here can be considered the objectivity of costs, i.e. they are either associated with external conditions for counterparties, or are determined by their behavior.

In the first case, shortcomings in coordination between individuals act as a source of costs, in the second - shortcomings in their rationality and/or morality. As another criterion for this differentiation of transaction costs, in this case, we can offer the object of matching with which they are associated. Accordingly, coordination costs are incurred to ensure the matching of plans, and motivational costs are incurred to match the incentives. Specific examples of both varieties are presented in Table. 7.1.

Table 7.1. Coordination and motivational transaction costs.

O. Williamson's classification.

O. Williamson's classification highlights such a side of transactions as their contractual nature, so that all transaction costs are considered in connection with the contractual process. The main criterion for this classification is the moment of conclusion of the contract, and, accordingly, transaction costs are divided into costs before (ex ante) and after (ex post).

Ex ante transaction costs are associated with efforts to conclude the most profitable contract, ex post transaction costs reflect the desire to fulfill and economically realize an already concluded contractual agreement. The types of costs included in these two main types of transaction costs are presented in Table. 7.2.

Table 7.2. Ex ante and ex post transaction costs.

As already mentioned at the beginning of this topic, we are interested in transaction costs primarily in connection with the study of the theory of organizations, which is referred to here as transactional, since it sees the economic basis of organizations in the need to save transaction costs. Let us consider the conditions for the existence of transaction costs, as they are understood within the framework of this theory. These conditions are bounded rationality, opportunism, and transaction specificity of assets.

Table 7.3. The economic meaning of contracts as a way of organizing transactions depending on the assumptions made regarding the behavior and specificity of assets.

Tab. 7.3. shows what would be the economic meaning of contracts as a way of organizing transactions, both in the presence of all three of these conditions, and in the absence of any one of them.

In the second case, the implementation of contractual transactions should not involve any significant costs.

Planning: in the absence of the condition of bounded rationality, one will have to admit full rationality, i.e., the completeness of knowledge that is not associated with any costs. In this case, the contract will be nothing more than an action plan, the drafting and implementation of which will be free.

Promise: in the absence of the condition of opportunism, one would have to admit the absence of deceit in the world and, accordingly, the fulfillment of the promises taken would occur without coercion, that is, free of charge. The contract would then be only a self-fulfilling promise, the existence of which would fully replace the self-fulfilling plan.

Competition: when transactions are devoid of such characteristics as asset specificity, the contract will be only a means of competition. In this case, one could speak of a classical market, the most important property of which is the absence of mutual dependence between counterparties, due to which any agreement can be broken at any time and replaced by another at no cost.

Transaction Management Structure: When all three limiting conditions are present, the contract acts as a costly structure for managing transactions.

As in Commons, in the neo-institutional theory, the basic unit is an act of economic interaction, a deal, a transaction, which is an exchange of bundles of property rights. And, therefore, transaction costs (or costs of its implementation) arise when individuals exchange property rights and cover activities related to this process. These activities include:

• searching for information about prices and quality, as well as searching for potential buyers and sellers and information about their reputation;
• trades necessary to identify the true positions of counterparties;
• supervision of contract partners and ensuring the conditions for fulfilling the terms of the contract, recovering damages if necessary;
• protection of property rights from encroachment of a third party.

And according to these types of activities accompanying the transaction, there are types (or elements) of transaction costs.

The costs of seeking information, or the costs of identifying alternatives. Under the conditions of uncertainty that exists in any real economic system, costs inevitably arise due to the search for the most favorable price and other terms of the contract. It is quite obvious that before a deal is made or a contract is concluded, it is necessary to have information about where to find potential buyers and sellers of the relevant goods and factors of production, what are the current prices, etc. The costs of this kind are made up of the time and resources required to conduct the search, as well as the losses associated with the incompleteness and imperfection of the acquired information. As already emphasized, the uncertainty existing in the market, which gives rise to the asymmetry of information possessed by counterparties, is the most important reason for the emergence of transaction costs. Trying to equalize this asymmetry, they incur the costs of searching, accumulating and verifying information.

To minimize this kind of costs, institutions such as stock exchanges, as well as advertising or reputation, are used. Reputation, as a socially significant assessment of an economic agent in terms of business ethics, helps to save transaction costs. It is closely connected with the means of individualization of enterprises, in particular with trade names, trademarks. It is these tools that allow consumers to save on search costs. True, this means that the stronger the trademark is a source of information and the greater the savings in search costs, the higher, all other things being equal, the price charged by the seller can be.

As for the institution of exchanges, which are a type of organized markets, cost savings are possible due to the concentration of supply and demand in space and (or) in time. As a result, the circulation of information is accelerated and prices are more intensively equalized.

A variation of the cost of information retrieval is the cost of measurement. Costs of this kind are associated with the fact that any product or service is a complex of characteristics, and only some of them are inevitably taken into account in the act of exchange, and the accuracy of their assessment (measurement) is extremely approximate. Sometimes the qualities of a product of interest are not measurable at all, and surrogates have to be used to evaluate them. Measurement costs increase with increasing accuracy requirements. These measurements consist in determining some of the physical parameters of the exchanged rights (color, size, weight, quantity, etc.), as well as in determining property rights (rights of use, rights to receive and alienate income).

As a result, one of the most important problems of market practice is the problem of measuring the quality of goods and services. In connection with the definition of this type of transaction costs, three categories of goods are distinguished: experienced, researched, and trusted. Goods with prohibitively high costs of measuring quality before acquiring them are called experiential goods. Goods with a relatively cheap preliminary quality determination procedure are called research goods. The quality of the latter can be relatively easily assessed prior to purchase.

The quality of goods of the second type (investigated) can be established by inspection prior to purchase, while the quality of goods of the first type (experimental) can only be established during the use of this product. Note here that in markets where sellers benefit little from investment in reputation, they may lack incentives to deliver high-quality, empirically valued goods. In this case, if we are talking about the organization of the market for an experienced durable good, the set of signals is of great importance. For example, warranty after-sales service, the possibility of replacing a defective product within a certain period, etc. Warranty after-sales service acts as a kind of insurance for the buyer, which assumes the transfer of risk to the seller.

As for trust goods, they are characterized by high measurement costs both before and after the purchase. This is due to the complexity of calculating the positive effect due to the complexity of assessing the result. Trusted benefits include medical and educational services, the effect of which is extended over time and is rather difficult to identify. Institutions can also be considered as trust goods, the coordination effect of which is practically unmeasurable.

The already mentioned institution of advertising is a factor that reduces not only the costs of information search, but also the transaction costs of measurement. Because, firstly, advertising provides information about the main ways to use the product. Secondly, the volume of advertising, which is related to the quality of the product being evaluated by experience, serves as a signal to the buyer about the extent of the investment made by the seller. Assuming that advertising cannot change tastes, large-scale advertising indicates the manufacturer's desire to deliver high-quality products.

Note that the last assumption is unprovable. Rather, in modern conditions, advertising is primarily aimed at changing tastes, being a tool for implementing the principle of “create demand and satisfy it”, in contrast to the principle that prevails in the conditions considered by neoclassical theory, where the behavior of producers is reduced to finding the available demand from buyers. and his satisfaction.

As representatives of traditional institutionalism, in particular, Veblen, emphasized, advertising is primarily a mechanism for exercising the power of the producer over the consumer and, to a much lesser extent, can be considered a way to reduce the costs of measurement and the costs of information search. Advertising in this capacity can be considered only if the postulate of an “economic” person is accepted, the characteristic of which is independence (unsuggestibility), i.e. accurate knowledge of the system of their true preferences. It is over such a person that advertising has no power and serves as a means of reducing the costs described above.

The institution of advertising is becoming widespread with the formation of a mass consumer society, i.e. from the end of the 19th century It should be noted that in traditional societies, as well as at the early stage of the formation of a market economy, advertising was categorically condemned, since it was considered as an instrument of competition, leading to the destruction of social ties and norms of economic interaction.

If you look at the problem in historical terms, then the institutional response to the costs of measurement in the first place was not advertising, but a system of measures and weights. The latter made different amounts of goods comparable, thereby greatly facilitating exchange and providing enormous savings in measurement costs. By the way, money can also be interpreted as an institutional response to the problem of barter exchange, where money acts as a generally accepted means of payment, protected either by tradition, economic custom, or by the power of the state. Here, money is a means of reducing transaction costs associated with measuring the quality of the exchanged good, as well as finding a partner who has the right product.

In addition to the costs of information retrieval and measurement costs, an important element of transaction costs are negotiation costs.

Obviously, the development of the terms of the contract, designed to give stability to the relationship, requires both time resources and the diversion of significant funds for negotiating the terms of the exchange, for concluding and formalizing the contracts themselves. A tool to reduce costs of this kind is the standardization of contracts, if the situations that are regulated by these contracts 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 mutual trust of the parties.

However, the most hidden and, from the point of view of neoinstitutional economic theory, the most interesting element of transaction costs are the so-called costs of opportunistic behavior. The term “opportunistic behavior” itself was introduced into economic theory by O. Williamson, a prominent representative of the neo-institutional trend, who interprets it as behavior that evades the terms of the contract. This includes various cases of lying, cheating, idleness at work, etc. At the same time, it is taken as an axiom that utility-maximizing individuals will always evade the terms of the contract (i.e., provide services of a smaller volume or worse quality) to the extent that this does not threaten their economic security. Thus, the costs of opportunistic behavior are reduced to the costs that prevent this type of behavior.

Finally, transaction costs include costs of specification and protection of property rights. It has already been noted that benefits have many dimensions, including in terms of possible ways to use them, so certain resources are required to clearly define the object and subject of property rights. The problem of specification of property rights arises almost everywhere if the system of interaction between people about limited resources is reproduced. This includes the costs associated with protecting concluded contracts from non-performance, as well as from infringement of property rights by third parties.

At the same time, protection can be carried out both by the parties to the agreement, and by a party neutral with respect to them, acting as a fair, impartial arbitrator. As already noted, the state has moved into this role in the process of historical development. And, of course, this category of transaction costs includes the costs of maintaining courts, arbitration, and government agencies. This also includes the time and resources required to restore violated rights.

Some authors, in particular, D. North, add here the costs of maintaining a consensus ideology in society, since educating members of society in the spirit of observing generally accepted unwritten rules and ethical norms is a much more economical way to protect property rights than formalized legal control. In such a broad interpretation, this type of costs includes not only the costs caused by the direct protection of property rights, an essential element of which is the cost of maintaining law enforcement agencies, but partly also the costs in the field of education. The latter is true to the extent that this area informs people about the existing social and legal conditions of exchange and shapes the behavior that determines the appropriate fulfillment of obligations.

This classification of transaction costs is the most common and applies mainly to trade transactions. This is not surprising, since within the framework of neo-institutional analysis, the voluntariness of the transaction, which is the main characteristic of trade transactions, is at the forefront.

However, there are other classifications of transaction costs. In particular, in the interpretation of O. Williamson they are divided into two groups: preliminary and final. This means the classification of transaction costs according to the criterion "stages of the transaction".

The preliminary stages of the transaction include the search for partners in the transaction and the coordination of their interests. The final stages of the transaction include the execution of the transaction and control over its implementation. The first type of costs is called "ex ante", the second - "ex post".

As a consequence, to "preliminary" transaction costs include:

• the costs of searching for information, including about a potential partner and the situation on the market, as well as losses associated with the incompleteness and imperfection of the acquired information;
• the costs of negotiating the terms of the exchange, the choice of the form of the transaction;
• costs of measuring the quality of goods and services for which a transaction is made;
• the costs of concluding a contract in the form of a legal or illegal registration of a transaction.

To "final" costs include:

• the costs of monitoring and preventing opportunism (the costs of monitoring compliance with the terms of the transaction and avoiding these terms);
• costs of specification and protection of property rights (expenses for the maintenance of courts and arbitration; the cost of time and resources necessary to restore rights violated during the execution of the contract; losses from poor specification of property rights and unreliable protection);
• costs of protection against unfounded claims from third parties, for example, mafia groups.

It is important to note that under the assumption of completeness of information, the types of activities that generate the above transaction costs would either not be needed at all, or would be cost-free. In particular, the potential opportunistic behavior of exchange partners would be known in advance, and rational individuals would not allocate resources to enforce and enforce their contractual rights.

However, in the real world, information belongs to the category of rare, limited resources, is therefore an economic good and is by no means free. It is no coincidence that one of the economists called the world with zero transaction costs as strange as the physical world without friction. This means that the economic system also exists with some "friction" that makes it difficult to carry out economic exchanges. This is “friction” in the exchange of goods, which in neo-institutional theory is interpreted as an exchange of bundles of powers, and generates transaction costs, which are a positive value in the real economy, and quite high at that. Sometimes they can reach a level at which an exchange that is beneficial in other respects may not take place.

Thus, it is the incompleteness of information that determines the existence of transaction costs, since the latter, one way or another, are associated with the costs of obtaining information about the exchange. Figuratively speaking, transaction costs consist of those costs, the existence of which cannot be imagined in R. Crusoe's economy. That is, they represent costs above and beyond own production costs.

It is worth noting that it is precisely with the existence of completeness of information among the participants in the economic process and zero transaction costs of exchange within the framework of the market system that the optimal distribution of resources and maximum social welfare would be ensured in accordance with the Pareto optimum.

The presence of transaction costs can lead (and leads) to a number of negative consequences for economic development. As noted in the first lecture, they interfere with the process of market formation, and in some cases can completely block it, which creates obstacles to the realization of the principle of comparative advantage that underlies trade and, consequently, economic growth.

Also, their presence makes it difficult to find new opportunities to use known resources or discover new resources. And, as we will see later, the presence of transaction costs prevents changes in the existing rules of the game, acting as the costs of institutional transformation.

What makes it possible to reduce transaction costs? Last but not least, their ability to create economies of scale. This is due to the fact that there are constant components in all types of transaction costs: when information is collected, it can be used by any number of potential sellers and buyers; contracts are standardized; the cost of developing legislation or administrative procedures does not depend on how many persons are subject to them. And, once established, property rights can be extended almost indefinitely to other areas at little additional cost.

As a result, due to savings in transaction costs on a market scale, the per capita income of the population can increase even in the absence of technical progress due to the growing “market character” of the economy. The latter is caused precisely by the reduction in transaction costs that accompany the exchange, and allows the benefits of the division of labor or specialization to be realized.

Returning to the first lecture, let us once again pay attention to the fact that in neo-institutional economic theory the formation of market economy institutions is considered as a process leading to a decrease in transaction costs (or exchange costs). Transaction costs are generated by incomplete information, or uncertainty in the context of a mismatch of interests of economic agents interacting with each other, and therefore the set of institutions existing in society, according to representatives of the neo-institutional direction, should be analyzed from the point of view of their influence on these problems.

As we can see, transaction costs are one of the central categories of neo-institutional theory. Including them in economic analysis makes it possible to explain almost all phenomena in terms of efficiency achieved by minimizing transaction costs. But it is worth paying attention to the fact that they are based on components invisible to the naked eye and are difficult to quantify. And at the same time, transaction costs are, within the framework of neo-institutional analysis, the key to understanding the processes taking place in the economy.

Given the importance of this category, it is not surprising that attempts have been made to develop methods for estimating transaction costs. One approach is to clearly specify the costs on a case-by-case basis. In one case, for example, these may be the costs of entering the market (registration of a company, obtaining a license), in the other, the costs associated with the conclusion and protection of contracts, etc. When broken down element by element, many components of these costs turn out to be quite measurable.

A slightly different approach is indicated by the American economists J. Wallis and D. North: the basis of the analysis is the difference they introduced between “transformational” (associated with physical impact on an object) and transaction costs. According to them, transformational costs are the costs associated with the transformation of resources into finished products. To determine the transaction costs, the following criterion is used: from the point of view of the consumer, these costs are all his costs, the cost of which is not included in the price he pays to the seller; from the point of view of the seller, these costs are all his costs that he would not incur if he "sold" the goods to himself.

Developing this approach, these economists tried to determine the size of the so-called transaction sector in the US economy, or the share of transaction costs relative to GNP and its development trends. The calculation was made on the basis of determining the total amount of resources used by firms selling transaction services, as well as measuring the resources allocated to transaction services by firms producing other goods and services.

This classification made it possible to single out a special category of firms whose activities are related to the provision of transaction services. And even if transformational costs take place within the framework of their activities, then at the level of the economy as a whole, according to the above-mentioned economists, they are still assessed as part of transaction costs. This category of firms includes intermediaries that provide pure transactional services or predominantly transactional services. Taken together, they are transactional industries. North and Wallis included groups of firms operating in the following areas:

• 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 transaction support;
• banking and insurance. Their main function is to mediate in the implementation of exchanges and reduce the costs associated with the security of the implementation of ownership rights to the corresponding resource;
• legal or legal services. The main function of the relevant organizations is to ensure the coordination and control of the implementation of the terms of the contracts. For example, firms hire lawyers in order to save on the costs of using the existing system of rules, since it is difficult to take into account the various regulations that constitute the institutional environment of the firm;
• wholesale and retail trade. Of course, it includes both transactional and transformational services, which include storage. Nevertheless, in the study of the aforementioned economists, it was treated as a transactional industry.

North and Wallis also included government services and intra-company transaction services in the transaction sector of the economy. Transaction services in the public or public sector include: national defense, police, air and water transport, financial management and general control; education, health care, highway maintenance, fire protection, etc.; other expenses (social insurance, space research, etc.).

As a result of the study, it was revealed that the growth of the transaction sector of the US economy amounted to a quarter of GNP in 1870 to a half - in 1970. At the same time, North and Wallis identified three main factors for the expansion of the transaction sector of the economy.

First of all - growth of costs of specification and protection of property rights, maintenance of contractual relations. This is not surprising, since with the development of market relations, accompanied by an increase in specialization and urbanization, the exchange becomes increasingly impersonal, depersonalized, which requires the widespread use of legal specialists. In addition, the expansion of the sphere of exchange, increasing the range of possible alternatives, has also led to an increase in the costs of obtaining and processing information.

The second factor is technological changes. Capital-intensive technologies can be used profitably if a consistently high level of output can be achieved. And for this it is necessary to establish both the provision of a rhythmic, uninterrupted flow of resources and the creation of a system for managing stocks and the sale of manufactured products, as well as the creation of a system that ensures coordination and control over the actions of people within the company. Thus, these processes have led to an increase in the share of in-house transaction services in the transformational sector of the economy.

The third factor is reducing the costs of using the political system to redistribute property rights.

In other words, the factors that caused the growth of the transaction sector, according to North and Wallis, were:

• deepening specialization and division of labor, which increased the number of transactions;
• scaling up enterprises in industry and transport;
• strengthening the role and influence of the state.

The dramatic expansion of the transaction sector, according to these economists, began in the middle of the 19th century. in connection with the development of the railway network, which paved the way for the urbanization of the population and the expansion of markets. And, as already noted, it was this process that was accompanied by the growth of impersonal exchange, which requires a detailed definition of the terms of the transaction and developed mechanisms for legal protection. At the same time, the consequences of greater product diversity and the weakening of personal contacts were expressed in the fact that economic agents increased their costs for the search and processing of market information, which led to the creation of specialized structures.

At the same time, and this should be emphasized, the share of transaction costs per transaction has significantly decreased. And it is quite convincing to assume that, ultimately, the development of the transaction sector was due precisely to the fact that the accompanying reduction in the costs per transaction opened the way for further deepening of specialization and division of labor.

In conclusion, we note that only specified transaction costs are taken into account in the study by North and Wallis. And this indirectly indicates that the accounting of transaction costs becomes possible when the transaction activity is transferred to the sphere of transaction services. In this case, it becomes possible to give them a generalized cost estimate. As an example, turnkey commissioning of firms, cashing out money, recruiting services. At the same time, a number of costs that should be attributed to unspecified transaction costs, such as waiting in queues and the costs of searching for goods, remained outside the field of view of researchers.

However, despite all the difficulties of their calculation, within the framework of neo-institutional analysis, transaction costs become an element of the costs of economic activity along with transformation costs, which are the object of analysis in traditional neoclassical theory. Moreover, it is relative differences in the levels and structure of transaction costs that representatives of neoinstitutionalism explain the diversity of forms of economic and social life. Alternative economic institutions are said to have comparative advantages in saving on different categories of transaction costs, and their coexistence is connected precisely with this.

This approach is vividly represented both in the theory of economic organizations and in the theory of contracts, the analysis of which is devoted to the next lecture.

• One of the problems that arise here, which is called the “information paradox”, is precisely that it is quite difficult to give a preliminary assessment of the significance of the information received. There are other approaches, and if we take the area in which transaction costs arise as a criterion, then we can single out: market transaction costs - for the search and processing of information related to negotiation, decision-making and control over their implementation; managerial transaction costs - the costs of developing, implementing and maintaining an organizational structure; political transaction costs - the costs of creating, maintaining and changing the legislative system, legal proceedings, defense, education, etc.
• As has been noted more than once, the prerequisite for the completeness of information (within the framework of the adoption of the model of the "economic" person) is one of the basic ones in neoclassical models. In addition, any exchange is considered in them as a one-time exchange of rights, the good is researched, the firm is a monolith that excludes the existence of conflicting interests in it, i. the absence of opportunistic behavior is assumed.
• And from the same positions the criterion of their effectiveness is put forward. It has been repeatedly noted that such an approach is rooted in a value orientation that assumes that the goal of economic development is to increase the wealth of the nation, expressed in the totality of goods and services produced.
• For example, when buying a house, the buyer's transaction costs will include the money spent on hiring a lawyer, spending time inspecting the house, and collecting price information for similar products. For the seller, these costs will consist of advertising costs, hiring a real estate agent, time spent showing the house, and so on.
• To quantify the transactional sector within the firm, North and Wallis proposed to single out professions that are directly related to the performance of transactional functions (these include activities related to: the acquisition of resources; the distribution of the manufactured product; coordination and control over the performance of transformational functions); and the value of transaction costs is determined by calculating the wages of those employed in the intra-company transaction sector.