Transaction Costs: Renderings and Consequences

Abstract

Although the theory of transaction costs has long been fruitfully used in the analysis of the economy, some of its aspects still have an ambiguous understanding among the researchers. The purpose of the article is to analyze such alternative interpretations. It is shown that transaction costs include mainly accounting components, and in some cases also subjective estimates of opportunity costs. Based on the analysis of the literature, the erroneous interpretation of transaction costs as unproductive has been demonstrated, and situations have been identified in which the minimization of transaction costs certainly contributes to the growth and development of the economy. The final section shows that the notion of transactional benefit (transactional value), which some researchers believe is a development of the theory of transaction costs, is in fact nothing more than another name for such a well-known concept as the benefits of joint activity, or the benefits of trade. It is shown that taking into account the benefits of joint activities and trade has always been part of the institutional analysis of the economy, starting with the work of R. Coase, D. North and O. Williamson, due to which the mentioned concept of transaction benefits is unlikely to make a meaningful contribution to the development of the theory of transaction costs.