Manifestations of workaholism of pedagogical workers in the sphere. workaholism

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

transformation costs (technology costs);
transaction costs.

Transformation costs - ϶ᴛᴏ costs that accompany the process of physical change of 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 ᴏᴛʜᴏϲᴙt transaction costs, while they may be pure technology.

Transaction costs - there 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) - ϶ᴛᴏ exchange costs associated with the transfer of ownership. The category of transaction costs was introduced into economics in the 1930s. Ronald Coase and now received wide use. In his article "The Nature of the Firm" he defined transaction costs as the costs of the functioning of the market.

Let's explore the possible alternatives provided to us everyday life. A typical example is apartment renovation. You can do it yourself if you know how and if you have an interest in ϶ᴛᴏ. Or you can organize the whole process by hiring workers on 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 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. Moreover, if you are a busy person or rich enough, you hire a company to repair an apartment, because your opportunity costs of time are higher than the costs that you spend on organizing the ϶ᴛᴏth process. Most often, ϶ᴛᴏ is associated with " wealth effect"- "wealth effect". Coase also introduced the term ϶ᴛᴏt for the first time. 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".

Today, transaction costs are understood by the vast majority of scientists integrally, as the costs of the functioning of the system. Transaction costs - ϶ᴛᴏ costs arising when individuals exchange ϲʙᴏ and property rights in conditions of complete information or confirm them under the same conditions. When people exchange property rights they enter into a contract. When they confirm ϲʙᴏe ownership, they do not enter into any contractual relationship (they already have it), but they protect it from attacks by third parties. It is worth noting that 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 results in 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. Costs associated with negotiating the terms of the sale, legal registration transactions, 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 errors that inevitably arise in the ϶ᴛᴏm 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 guarantees provided by the company (free warranty repair, the right to exchange defective products for good ones, etc.) At the same time, these measures cannot completely eliminate measurement costs.

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 a moral hazard (moral hazard) always exists. It is worth noting that 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 potential opportunities each completely unknown. Thus, opportunistic called the behavior of an individual who evades the terms of a contract in order to profit at the expense of partners. It is worth noting that 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 ϲʙᴏ and relative advantages, such team members can demand special working conditions or pay for themselves, blackmailing others with the threat of leaving the team.

Based on the above, we come to the conclusion that transaction costs arise before the exchange process (ex ante), during the exchange process and after it (ex post). The deepening of the 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 us study them from the standpoint of the theory of transaction costs.

Worth Saying - Paul R. Milgrom and John Roberts suggested the following classification transaction costs. It is worth noting that they divide them into two categories - the costs associated with coordination, and the costs associated with motivation.

Coordination 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.

Motivational costs:

Costs associated with incomplete information. The limited information about the market can lead to the rejection of 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 teapot, you will buy the next only when your ϶ᴛᴏt breaks. AT 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, constantly buying bread from the same seller, you know that he good quality, and therefore do not spend money on an additional assessment, whether the bread was sold to you good, what kind of bread is in other bakeries, etc. This is very important, because in this way you save significantly 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 to use the ϶ᴛᴏth asset brings much less income and is associated with risk. Specific assets are such costs, the next use of which will be much less profitable.

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

Idiosyncratic asset— ϶ᴛᴏ an asset that, in alternative use (with its withdrawal 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, ϶ᴛᴏ 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.

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 will hire a firm to renovate an 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.

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.

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.

Coordination 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.

Motivational costs:

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 don’t 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.

Transaction costs are associated with the use of real resources - namely, the resources that are required for the implementation of the above social transactions (including economic transactions).

As already noted, Arrow defined transaction costs as operating costs. economic system. But transaction costs, in addition to such routine costs, also include the costs of creating, maintaining, or changing the underlying institutional structure of the system. Thus, with regard to formal institutions, we can say that transaction costs are the costs that arise when establishing, using, maintaining and changing: 1) institutions in the sense of law (for example, the German Basic Law or the German Civil Code) and 2) institutions in sense of rights (for example, a specific requirement arising from a voluntarily concluded labor contract). Moreover, due to the informal activities associated with the functioning of basic formal institutions, additional transaction costs appear here.

Typical examples transaction costs are the costs of using the market mechanism and exercising the right to give orders within the firm. In the first case, we will talk about market transaction costs, and in the second case, about managerial transaction costs. To the extent that institutions in the sense of law are the subject of study, a number of costs associated with the operation and adjustment must be taken into account. institutional framework state structure. For lack of a better term, in this case we will speak of political transaction costs.

In each of these three types of transaction costs, two types can be distinguished: 1) "fixed" transaction costs, i.e. specific investments made in the creation of institutional arrangements, and 2) "variable" transaction costs, i.e. costs that depend on the number or volume of transactions. Before proceeding further in describing market, managerial, and political transaction costs, one more general remark needs to be made. We know that production costs are interpreted as the costs associated with the activity "production". Similarly, we can consider that transaction costs are the costs of carrying out such an activity as a "transaction". Then, by analogy with the production process, which is described by a production function, transactional activity can be described by a transactional function. This approach to transaction costs will be explored in more depth in the following discussion. 2.2.1.

Market transaction costs

In starting a discussion on this topic, we can do nothing better than to quote Professor Coase:

In order to carry out a market transaction, it is necessary to determine with whom it is desirable to deal, to inform those with whom one wants to deal and on what terms, to negotiate leading to a deal, to prepare a contract, to gather information to make sure that the terms of the contract are being fulfilled. , etc. [Soave, 1960, p. fifteen].

Market transaction costs primarily include information costs and negotiation costs. Obviously, information costs are important, but the magnitude of the costs associated with negotiating should not be underestimated either. Therefore Dalman [Dalman, 1979, p. 148], perhaps greatly exaggerating when he claims that one can speak of only one type of transaction costs - "loss of resources due to imperfect information". On the contrary, it is true that the complete absence of transaction costs (as in neoclassical models) is associated with the premise of the presence of complete information. However, it seems that such an orthodox interpretation is not entirely correct. It must be assumed that in order to guarantee the protection of the existing distribution of rights private property more than just information is required. In reality, the information is, of course, far from complete. There is market uncertainty.82 No decision maker can instantly and automatically know by whom and under what conditions a particular product will be bought or sold.

In general, in reality there is no anonymous exchange in perfectly competitive markets. Usually, potential exchange participants need to find each other, and in the event that the interested parties have established contact, they should try to learn more about each other. Namely, everyone must find out who the possible partner is, whether he is willing and able to adhere to those agreements that can be reached. Negotiations are necessary to find a partner for an effective exchange and to establish in detail the terms of the exchange. It is likely that there will be a need to provide legal guarantees. Since the possibility of errors is not ruled out, the execution of the contract must be supervised. In some cases it may even be necessary to enforce contractual obligations through legal means or other sanctions. The costs of using the market mechanism can be classified in more detail as follows: 1) the costs of preparing contracts, search costs and information costs in the narrow sense); 2) the costs of concluding contracts (the costs of negotiating and making decisions), and 3) the costs of monitoring and enforcing contractual obligations.

Search costs and information costs. An individual who intends to make a particular market transaction must find the right partner for a deal, and the search process is inevitably associated with costs. Such costs may arise from the fact that individuals incur direct costs (for advertising, meeting with potential clients, etc.), or there are indirect costs for the creation of organized markets (stock exchanges, fairs, weekly bazaars, etc.). ). This also includes the costs of communication between the future parties to the exchange (such as postal and telephone costs, as well as the cost of paying sales representatives). There are other costs associated with collecting information about the prices charged by different suppliers of the same goods,83 and costs associated with testing and quality control. In the case of services, quality control involves an assessment of the credentials and compliance of the service provider.84 Of course, the main problem in the service sector - the search for qualified workers, an activity that is increasingly costly and time-consuming. With theoretical point of view, issues related to search costs and information costs, in one form or another, are the subject of study of a special area of \u200b\u200bresearch - economic theory information.85 The issues addressed here are important because, inter alia, using resources to obtain reliable information helps decision makers avoid costly mistakes. 2.

Costs of negotiation and decision making. Costs in this category refer to the costs that must be incurred in the process of drafting a contract when the parties involved negotiate the terms of the contract. This process is not only time consuming, but in some cases also costly. legal advice. And given the existence of information asymmetry (i.e., the parties involved in the negotiations own private information), this can lead to inefficient results. Depending on the specific situation, the contract may be more or less legally complex and therefore more or less difficult to negotiate. Decision-making costs include the costs of making any collected information user-friendly, the compensation of consultants, the costs associated with decision-making within groups, etc. Finally, it should be mentioned that, as in other areas , complexity and high cost of contracting due to competition. 3.

The costs of monitoring and enforcing contracts. These costs arise from the need to monitor compliance due date deliveries, measuring the quality and volume of products, etc. And here information plays important role. There are costs of measuring the measurable quality of the exchanged items, protecting rights, and enforcing the terms of the contract. Because the costs of oversight and enforcement are high, breaches of contracts are to some extent inevitable. Of course, fraud or opportunistic behavior of contract participants has Negative consequences. The result of such deviant behavior will not only be redistributive effects, but also losses in overall output or welfare. Opportunistic behavior, which can potentially be avoided through appropriate types of institutional arrangements, creates an obstacle to the normal functioning of the contractual system. Williamson explores similar issues in relation to the issue of ex ante and ex post contracting. 2.2.2.

management transaction costs. *

Here we will talk about the costs of executing labor contracts between a firm and its employees. For convenience, let us assume that personal employment contracts have already been concluded and should come into force. In accordance with our original classification, the costs arising in this connection belong to the market category. Management transaction costs are reduced to the following types:

b) the costs associated with the physical crossing of the boundaries of related production processes by goods and services - examples are the costs of downtime in the process of moving semi-finished products within the enterprise, the costs of intra-company transportation, etc.

Some of the costs listed in paragraph 2 are fixed, and some are variable transaction costs. It depends on whether they are overhead or related to sales volume or other activities. Different kinds costs noted during the review of managerial transaction costs, in last years have come to play an increasing role in cost accounting in a manner known as transaction costing. A description of the new approach can be found in the works. The goal of transaction costing is to find ways to reduce the ever-increasing production overheads that seem to be the bane of modern industry. It is argued that most overheads are based on transactions, and therefore the key to managing overheads can be the control of transactional activities leading to an increase in overheads. It must be assumed that transactions can be "managed" by seriously considering which of them are expedient and which are not. Thus, it is possible to provide for a reduction in overhead costs.

In this regard, the literature highlights Various types transactions, for example:

logistics transactions - placing orders for materials, fulfilling these orders and ensuring the movement of materials; ?

balancing transactions - ensuring compliance with the equality of demand and supply of materials, labor and production capacities; ?

quality transactions - quality control, secondary engineering,86 procurement organization and preparation of relevant data; ?

change transactions - updating the main production information systems and posting there data on changes in project documentation, calendar plans and specifications for materials. 2.2.3.

Political transaction costs

It is assumed that market and managerial transactions are carried out in conditions where the political foundations of the system are clearly defined, i.e., institutional arrangements correspond to the capitalist market order, which means the existence of a certain local, national or international organization political community. Of course, this organization and the production of the public goods associated with it will also require costs. These are political transaction costs, which in a general sense are the costs of creating public goods through collective action. They can be interpreted as analogous to managerial transaction costs. In particular, they include: 1.

The costs of creating, maintaining and changing the formal and informal political organization systems. This includes the costs associated with establishing the legal framework, administrative structure, military, educational, judicial systems etc. But in addition to these costs, there are costs associated with the activities of political parties and pressure groups in general. In essence, all these costs are non-trivial costs associated with the “domestication of the power of coercion”, or the implementation of the “monopoly on organized violence”.87 2.

The costs of operating the state system. These are the current costs of carrying out what used to be called the "duties of the sovereign". They include current spending on legislation, defence, administration of justice, transport and education. As in the private sector, the performance of these public functions requires the expenditure of search, information, decision-making, issuance of (official) orders, monitoring and enforcement of official instructions. Levy defines political transaction costs as "the costs of measuring, monitoring, creating mechanisms to enforce compliance with established norms." To this must also be added the costs of exploiting those organizations that participate or attempt to participate in the adoption process. political decisions. Organizations of this type include political parties, trade unions, employers' associations and in general all other pressure groups. Finally, the costs of political negotiations must be taken into account.

It is important to note that the costs involved in "domesticating coercive power" or "creating a monopoly on organized violence" are completely overlooked in a neoclassical world with zero transaction costs. It is assumed that in the neoclassical environment force, any force, is under absolute control. Therefore, the transfer of ownership is carried out only subject to mutual consent. It is also assumed that pressure groups either do not exist at all or cancel each other out.6

To some extent, managerial and political transaction costs can be interpreted as agency or principal-agent costs. An agency relationship between two (or more) parties is understood as a relationship in which one party, the agent, acts in the interests and on behalf of the other party, the principal, or as his representative. Of course, in the face of widespread opportunism, the agent will not always act entirely in the interests of the principal. The latter, however, may try to limit the divergence from his interests by setting appropriate incentives for the agent. For example, it may share the benefits arising from the activity or assume the cost of monitoring to reduce the agent's evasive activity. Moreover, as Putterman noted: “In addition to everything, it is beneficial for the agent to spend additional resources (collateral costs88) and thereby provide a guarantee that he will not take such actions that could harm the principal ...” . Nevertheless, there usually remains some discrepancy between the agent's actual decisions and those that maximize the principal's welfare. The monetary equivalent of this difference is called the "residual loss of the principal". Jensen and Meckling define agency costs as the sum of the principal's monitoring costs, the agent's costs of securing collateral, and the principal's residual losses.

From all of the above, it follows that transaction costs, in essence, are the costs of specialization and division of labor. In addition, it is obvious that transactions require financial support for the real resources necessary for these purposes, and since this does happen, financial capital is needed to cover transaction costs. Therefore, we can talk about transactional capital. This category includes capital investments (basic transactional capital) in the organization of markets, firms, state structure, as well as working capital (working transaction capital), the costs of which are necessary to maintain the current functioning of the market and political systems. Since this activity is directly related to raising capital, when studying problems in this subject area the theory of capital can be applied. It seems that it would be very productive, in particular, to apply the theory of capital of the Austrian school,89 since time plays decisive role especially in the case of institutional changes. The concept of transactional capital is of particular interest when considering the theory of economic development and the economic theory of the transition from a socialist system to a market economy.

Another important aspect transaction costs lies in the fact that their value depends, inter alia, on the behavior of individuals. In particular, the costs of monitoring and protection will be lower if society is dominated by mutual trust. Under favorable conditions, property rights will be respected and there will be a relatively uniform idea of what fair conflict resolution is. Therefore, it seems that there should be a relationship between public morality, trust and institutional structure. Costs for public education and people's motivation must be seen in part as an investment that leads to a reduction in "friction" (transaction costs) in society and an increase in the productivity of the economy.

The concept of transaction costs was introduced by R. Coase in the 1930s in his article "The Nature of the Firm". It has been used to explain the existence of such anti-market hierarchical structures as firms. R. Coase associated the formation of these "islands of consciousness" with their relative advantages in terms of saving on transaction costs. He saw the specifics of the functioning of the company in the suppression of the price mechanism and its replacement by a system of internal administrative control.

Transaction or transaction costs are the exchange costs associated with the transfer of ownership. Typically, there are five main forms of transaction costs:

1. costs of information search;

2. costs of negotiating and concluding contracts;

3. measurement costs;

4. costs of specification and protection of property rights;

5. costs of opportunistic behavior. 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 costs 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 relevant 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.

Saving transaction costs acts as a kind of "motor" of institutional evolution.

A similar explanation is given to the fact of the coexistence of many diverse, sometimes seemingly incompatible, forms of economic and social life. Transaction costs are heterogeneous in composition. Therefore alone organizational forms may have one type of cost saving advantage, others another. Their diversity is due to the multiplicity of types of transaction costs and, accordingly, the multiplicity possible ways their savings.

From the point of view of the concept of production costs, communication between people occurs, as it were, for free.

We could equally argue about whether value is regulated by utility or production costs, as well as about whether a piece of paper cuts the upper or lower blade of the scissors ”A. Marshall. (Essay)

A. Marshall gives the following formulation of the market: "A market is any group of people who enter into close business relations and conclude deals on any product." At the conclusion of the transaction, the result is the Price. But what determines the value (price) of a good. Economists have long drawn attention to the relationship between the utility of a thing and its price. This connection is expressed, first of all, in the fact that a thing that is useless for the consumer has no price. And the greater the usefulness of a thing, the higher its price, as a rule.
At the same time, economists pointed to another factor that also has a serious impact on the price level. This is the cost of production. Which of these factors (utility or production costs) should be preferred. A. Marshall in his book “Principles economics” wrote: “We could argue with equal justification about whether value is regulated by utility or cost of production, as well as about whether a piece of paper cuts the upper or lower blade of scissors. Indeed, when one blade is held stationary and cutting is carried out by the movement of the other blade, we can, without thinking properly, assert that cutting produces a second one, but such an assertion is not completely accurate and can only be justified by a claim to simple popularity, and not strictly scientific description ongoing process." Marshall believed that both of these factors in equally determine the value (price) of the good.

2. The concept of transaction costs

Criticism of the position of the neoclassical theory that the exchange occurs without costs, served as the basis for the introduction of a new concept in economic analysis - transaction costs (transaction cost).

The concept of transaction costs was introduced by R. Coase in the 30s in his article "Nature of the Firm". It has been used to explain the existence of such hierarchical structures as opposed to the market, such as the firm. R. Coase associated the formation of these "islands of consciousness" with their relative advantages in terms of saving on transaction costs. He saw the specifics of the functioning of the company in the suppression of the price mechanism and its replacement by a system of internal administrative control.

So K. Arrow defines transaction costs as the costs of operating the economic system. Arrow compared the effect of transaction costs in economics with the effect of friction in physics. Based on such assumptions, conclusions are drawn that the closer the economy is to the model general equilibrium Walras, the lower the level of transaction costs in it, and vice versa.

In the interpretation of D. North, Transaction costs “consist of the costs of evaluating useful properties the object of exchange and the cost of enforcing and enforcing rights”. These costs serve as a source of social, political and economic institutions.

In the theories of some economists, transaction costs exist not only in a market economy (Coase, Arrow, North), but also in alternative ways of economic organization and, in particular, in a planned economy (S. Chang, A. Alchian, Demsets). Thus, according to Chang, the maximum transaction costs are observed in the planned economy, which ultimately determines its inefficiency.

2. Typology of transaction costs Transaction and transformation costs

There are many classifications and typologies of transaction costs in the economic literature. The most common is the following typology, which includes five types of transaction costs:

1. Information search costs. Before a deal is made or a contract is concluded, it is necessary to have information about where you can 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 costs 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. The act of exchange inevitably takes into account only some of them, 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 relevant 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.

4. Costs of specification and protection of property rights. This category includes expenses for the maintenance of courts, arbitration, state bodies, the time and resources6 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 in a contract one party relies on the other, 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 efficiency than is required of him under 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 total result of activity<команды>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 overall result measured from big mistakes, then his remuneration will be weakly related to the actual efficiency of his work. Hence the negative incentives that encourage shirking.

In private firms and in government agencies, special complex and expensive structures are created, 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 factors of production long time they work in close cooperation and rub against each other so much that each becomes indispensable, unique to 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<вымогательство>remains only a possibility, it always turns out to be associated 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).

The above classification is not the only one, for example, there is also the classification of K. Menard:

1. Isolation costs (similar to 5 (shirking).

2. Information costs.

3. Costs of scale

4. Costs of behavior.

With the introduction of transaction cost analysis, it is necessary to clarify the cost structure of the firm.

In a market economy, the company's costs can be divided into three groups: 1) transformational, 2) organizational, 3) transactional.

Transformation costs - transformation costs physical properties products in the process of using factors of production.

Organizational costs - the costs of ensuring control and allocation of resources within the organization, as well as the costs of minimizing opportunistic behavior within the organization.

Transaction and organizational costs are interrelated concepts, an increase in one leads to a decrease in the other and vice versa.

In modern economic analysis, transaction costs have received operational application. Thus, in some studies, the impact of transaction costs on supply and demand is similar to the introduction of taxes.

Also, the use of transaction (TC) costs allows us to express through them the function of demand for institutions in the analysis of institutional equilibrium and institutional dynamics. Collective action costs (CAC) act as the supply of institutions “on the institutional market”.

CAC is the marginal cost of creating institutions, TC is the marginal utility of institutions, expressed through their opportunity cost in the form of transaction costs.

3. Transaction costs and specification (dilution) of property rights

This problem is mainly studied in the framework of modern theory property rights. The main task of the theory of property rights is to analyze the interaction between economic and legal systems.

The theory of property rights is based on the following fundamental provisions:

1) property rights determine what costs and rewards agents can expect for their actions;

2) the restructuring of property rights leads to shifts in the system of economic incentives;

3) the reaction to these shifts will be the changed behavior of economic agents.

The theory of property rights proceeds from the basic idea that any act of exchange is essentially an exchange of bundles of powers.

In the words of Demsetz, “When a deal is made in a market, two bundles of property rights are exchanged. A bundle of rights is usually attached to a particular physical good or service, but it is the value of the rights that determines the value of the goods exchanged.... Economists commonly take the bundle of rights as given and look for an explanation of what determines the price and quantity of the commodity to be exchanged to which these rights refer.”

The wider the set of rights associated with a given resource, the higher its usefulness. Thus, one's own thing and a thing rented have different utility for the consumer, even if they are physically identical.

Economic agents cannot transfer more powers in exchange than they have. Therefore, the expansion or contraction of their property rights will also lead to a change in the conditions and scale of exchange (an increase or decrease in the number of transactions in the economy).

As a starting point for analysis, Western theorists usually turn to the private property regime. The right to private property is understood by them not only as arithmetic sum authority, but how complex structure. Its individual components mutually determine each other. The degree of their interconnectedness is manifested in the extent to which the restriction of any authority (up to its complete elimination) affects the implementation by the owner of other powers.

The high degree of exclusivity inherent in private property has two behavioral consequences:

1) the exclusivity of the right (usus fructus) implies that all positive and negative results activities they carry out. Therefore, he is interested in taking them into account as fully as possible when making decisions;

2) the exclusivity of the right of alienation means that in the process of exchange the thing will be transferred to the economic agent who will offer for it highest price, and thus an efficient distribution of resources in the economy will be achieved.

Western economists' defense of the private property system rests precisely on these efficiency arguments. They consider the exact definition of the content of property rights to be the most important condition for the effective functioning of the economy.

To exclude others from free access to a resource means to specify ownership rights to it.

The specification of property rights contributes to the creation of a stable economic environment by reducing uncertainty and creating stable expectations among individuals about what they can get as a result of their actions and what they can expect in relations with other economic agents. To specify the right of ownership means to accurately determine not only the subject of ownership, but also its object, as well as the way it is endowed.

The incompleteness of the specification is interpreted as the erosion (attenuation) of property rights. The meaning of this phenomenon can be expressed by the phrase - "no one will sow if the harvest goes to another."

Dilution of property rights can occur either because they are not well established and poorly protected, or because they fall under different kind restrictions, mainly from the state.

Since any restrictions rearrange the expectations of the economic agent, reduce the value of the resource for him, change the terms of exchange, the actions of the state are a priori suspected by the theorists of property rights.

It is necessary to distinguish between the processes of differentiation (splitting) and erosion of property rights. The voluntary and bilateral nature of the splitting of powers guarantees in their eyes that it will be carried out in accordance with the criterion of effectiveness. The main gain from the dispersal of powers is seen in the fact that economic agents get the opportunity to specialize in the implementation of one or another partial power, which increases the efficiency of their use (for example, in the right to manage or dispose of the capital cost of a resource).

In contrast, the unilateral and coercive nature of the restriction of property rights by the state does not provide any guarantee of its compliance with the criteria of effectiveness. Indeed, such restrictions are often imposed in the selfish interests of various lobbying groups.

In reality, it is very difficult to separate the processes of splitting from the processes of erosion of property rights, so the economic analysis of the problem of erosion of property rights does not mean a call for exact definition all rights to all resources at any cost.

The specification of property rights, from the point of view of economic theory, should go to the point where the further gain from overcoming their blurring will no longer pay for the associated costs.

The problem of specification of property rights, and the influence of transaction costs on this process, is considered in the “Property Theorem”.

4. Externalities transaction costs. Coase theorem

The Coase theorem has in modern scientific literature many interpretations, with half of which R. Coase himself would hardly agree.

In the beginning, let us briefly dwell on the range of problems and concepts that appear in the Coase theorem.

Externalities (externalities) - additional costs or benefits that are not reflected in prices.

Positive externalities occur when the activities of some economic entities lead to the emergence of additional benefits for other entities, and this is not reflected in the prices of the good produced.

Negative externalities occur when the activities of some economic entities cause additional costs for others.

Traditionally, in neoclassical theory, the problem of externalities was associated with "market failures" that justified government intervention, and was solved with the help of the "Pigou tax".

"Pigou tax" should be equal to MEC, then MSB=MSC.

Coase proposed an original hypothesis that negative externalities could be internalized by exchanging ownership of the objects that generate the externalities, provided that these rights are well defined and the costs of exchange are negligible. And as a result of such an exchange, the market mechanism will lead the parties to an effective agreement, which is characterized by the equality of private and social costs.

Difficulties in implementing the provisions of this theorem are: 1) in a clear definition of property rights; 2) high transaction costs.

The most common is the formulation of the Coase theorem given by George Stigler: “in conditions of perfect competition (with zero transaction costs, since in this case the monopolies will be forced to act as competitive V.V. firms), private and social costs will be equal.”

Coase's formulation is somewhat different: the delineation of rights (V.V.'s property) is an essential prerequisite for market transactions... the end result (which maximizes the value of production) is independent of the legal decision (only V.V.) assuming zero transaction costs.

Coase emphasized that Stigler did not take into account when formulating the theorem that when private and social costs are equal, the value of production will be maximized. This is obvious if we accept the following interpretation of social costs, which is given by Coase.

“Social costs represent the highest value that factors of production can bring when they are alternative use". But any entrepreneur will start production when his private costs are less than the value of the product produced with the help of attracted factors. Therefore, the equality of social and private costs implies the maximization of the value of production.

Sometimes, on the basis of this theorem, it is erroneously concluded that the “Cousian world” is a world with zero transaction costs. In reality, this is not so.

Coase, on the contrary, shows with his theorem the significance of transaction costs for economic analysis"actual events".

“In a world with zero transaction costs, the value of production will be maximized under any rules about liability.” In other words, at zero transaction costs legal regulations are irrelevant for maximization.

“With non-zero transaction costs, the law plays a key role in determining how resources are used... Making all or part of the changes (leading to the maximization of V.V. production) in contracts turns out to be too expensive. The incentives to take some steps that would lead to the maximization of production disappear. It depends on the law exactly what incentives will be missing, since it determines exactly how contracts need to be changed in order to carry out those actions that maximize the value of production.

It turns out a paradoxical situation, in cases of "market failure" we de facto recognize the presence of positive transaction costs, otherwise the market would automatically lead to a state of optimality, ensuring the maximization of the value of production.