How do economists decide what questions to address and how to choose their theories? How do they tackle the problems of the economic system and give advice on public policy? With these questions, Nobel laureate R.H. Coase reflects on some of the most fundamental concerns of economists over the past two centuries. In 15 essays, he evaluates the contributions of a number of figures, including Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, Arnold Plant, Duncan Black, and George Stigler, as well as economists at the London School of Economics in the 1930s.

In 1937, Ronald H. Coase published "The Nature of the Firm," a classic paper that raised fundamental questions about the concept of the firm in economic theory. Coase proposed that the comparative costs of organizing transactions through markets rather than within firms are the primary determinants of the size and scope of firms. Coase won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics for this work. This volume derives from a conference held in 1987 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Coase's classic article. The first chapter affords an overview of the volume. It is followed by a republication of the 1937 article, and by the three lectures Coase presented at the conference. These lectures provide a lively and informative history of the origins and development of his thought. Subsequent chapters explore a wide-range of theoretical and empirical issues that have arisen in the transaction cost economic tradition. They illustrate the power of the transaction cost approach to enhance understanding not only of business firms, but of problems of economic organization generally. In addition to Coase's work, contributors include Sherwin Rosen, Paul Joskow, Oliver Hart, Harold Demsetz, Scott Masten, Benjamin Klein, as well as the volume's editors, Oliver E. Williamson, and Sidney G. Winter. The Nature of the Firm includes Coase's acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize in Economics.

《真实世界的经济学》收集的，大部分是我1995年回国到北大任教以后为报章杂志陆续写下的文章。回头一看，时间过得很快。在《真实世界的经济学》中，收在“另眼看垄断”栏目下的文章，其实差不多都是我参加水工研究的“副产品”。作为一个“电信经济问题专家”我是1998年秋“卷入”电信开放市场的论战的，大部分有关文章已经收入了三联书店出版的《数网竞争》一书：我对网络产业经济问题的认识全部来自“I水工”。更一般而论，大凡在所谓“自然垄断”、“规模经济”之上加上了“国家行政垄断”的行为，经济逻辑如出一辙。《真实世界的经济学》的一些文章，放胆去“碰”教育、邮政、股市，分析的思路都是一样的，只是各业的具体约束不同，“碰”起来多彩多姿，各有各的意思。

Few other economists have been read and cited as much as R.H. Coase, a scholar who approached economics as a philosopher: with contemplation, careful scrutiny of real conditions and consideration of the practical implications of theory. "These essays bear rereading. Coase's careful attention to actual institutions not only offers deep insight into economics but also provides the best argument for Coase's methodological position. The clarity of the exposition and the elegance of the style also make them a pleasure to read and a model worthy of emulation."--Lewis A. Kornhauser, Journal of Economic Literature

《财产权利与制度变迁》的主要内容是：当代经济学系列丛书《财产权利与制度变迁》是一本关于产权与制度变迁理论的论文集，反映这两个学派的分析特征、重要假说和政策意义。

《企业、市场与法律》收录了罗纳德·哈里·科斯的七篇论文。《企业、市场与法律》的核心是《企业的性质》、《边际成本的论争》和《社会成本问题》，其余几篇或拓展、或说明、或解释了上述三篇文章的观点。1987年，美国耶鲁大学为纪念一篇经济学论文发表50周年，举行了一次学术讨论会。这篇论文就是美国芝加哥大学法学院教授罗纳德·哈里·科斯于1937年发表的论文“企业的性质”。

《经济解释(卷1):科学说需求(神州增订版)》编辑推荐：张五常自称《经济解释》是 “认真写成的最后一本经济学著作”。
被世人公认为是集张五常平生学术功力之大成，也是具有深远影响的经济学经典著作。《经济解释》三卷本基本囊括了张教授的学术思想。1982年，张教授在港大的就职演说中倡导：让我们做经济解释的弄潮儿。这本集子，正是这一思想的贯彻。
《经济解释》系列著作从经济学的角度出发，用科学的方法来解释现实生活中的经济现象和行为。融入了“新制度经济学”的研究成果——产权和交易费用理论。
《经济解释》包括三卷本：《科学说需求》、《供应的行为》和《制度的选择》。它逻辑划一、前后连贯、一气呵成，并无“微观”与“宏观”之分。卷二《供应的行为》分析了生产与供应与需求的关系，细说了有关生产的多种价值观念，从理论入手分析具体的经济现象。卷三则是前两卷的基础，从新制度经济学的高度出发，细说了科斯定律、产权结构与合约结构、价格控制理论、生产要素的合约安排等新制度经济学的重要理论。
《经济解释》不容易读。这是因为若要真的解释世事，简单的理论往往要用得相当深。比方说，所有在中学选修经济的同学都知道的需求定律——价格下降需求量增加——整本《经济解释》差不多来来，去去都是那样说，虽然“需求定律”这一词我只在“卷一”多用一点。变化多，要懂得很通透才真的可以用。

收入33篇短文所表述的形形色色历史上曾经发生或现实生活中正在发生的案例，向读者展现产权理论的核心概念和当代的进展情况。

本书将新制度经济学理为交易费用经济学、产权分析方法和合约理论的某种混合并主要对这些领域的有关解释行讨论。

Liberty Fund is proud to present, in two volumes, 'The Collected Works of Armen A Alchian', bringing together Alchian's most influential essays, articles, editorials, and lectures to provide a comprehensive record of his thinking on a broad range of topics in economics. As various and as specific as some of this collection's topics are, they are unified, as editor Daniel K Benjamin writes, by "both a coherent methodology for doing economics, and a view of the world that celebrates the importance of individual liberty." Benjamin goes on to state that, in Alchian's view, "the purpose of theory is never theory in and of itself; it is instead to help individuals understand the world around them."

《佃农理论》１９６７年获得芝加哥大学政治经济学奖。
张五常的《佃农理论》是现代合约经济学的开山之作。今天�《佃农理论》之价值随着时间推移其重要性越来越大，它不仅成了现代合约经济学的开山之作，而且其中的几文在期刊上发表后也成了现代新制度经济学的经典之作。例如，由Ｅｄｗａｒｄ Ｅｌｇａｒ出版社出版的经济理论经典文选的《交易费用经济学》一书，在选出这个学派最有影响与代表的４０篇文章中，其中两篇就是《佃农理论》的主要章节。
《佃农理论》主要是以现代新制度经济学的观点对分成租佃制度作出了新解释，推翻了以往的传统理论，建立了“新佃农理论”。其理论的要义是透过某些因素的变动，不管是分租、定租或地主自耕等，其土地利用的效率都是一样。如果产权弱化，或是政府过度干预资源配置时，将导致资源配置的无效率。如果能够定土地为私人产权，明晰产权制度，允许土地自由转让，这是使生产要素与土地发挥最大效率的不二法门。
在本书中，张五常深入地研究了市场经济条件下合约的本质以及交易费用的关系。现代合约经济学的研究已经渗透到经济学研究的各个领域，并成为现代经济学最热门的论题，张五常的《佃农理论》功不可没。
此外，本书不仅具有理论上的创新性与深入性，还在于文字优美、格式规范，此文亦成了不少经济学学子写作的典范或范文，在英语世界具有广泛的市场。本书由英文原版译出。

20世纪90年代，新制度经济学一经引进，迅速在我国学术界引发了一场革命，但这一理论对产权制度的过分强调掩盖了政府在经济发展过程中可能发挥的积极作用。本书则指出，新制度经济学的产权理论本身并不能完全解释近代欧洲经济的兴起，国家主权制度同样是近代经济革命的决定性制度变量，具有很高的学术价值，有利于我国经济学研究水平的综合提高。

In this landmark work, a Nobel Prize-winning economist develops a new way of understanding the process by which economies change. Douglass North inspired a revolution in economic history a generation ago by demonstrating that economic performance is determined largely by the kind and quality of institutions that support markets. As he showed in two now classic books that inspired the New Institutional Economics (today a subfield of economics), property rights and transaction costs are fundamental determinants. Here, North explains how different societies arrive at the institutional infrastructure that greatly determines their economic trajectories. North argues that economic change depends largely on 'adaptive efficiency,' a society's effectiveness in creating institutions that are productive, stable, fair, and broadly accepted - and, importantly, flexible enough to be changed or replaced in response to political and economic feedback.While adhering to his earlier definition of institutions as the formal and informal rules that constrain human economic behavior, he extends his analysis to explore the deeper determinants of how these rules evolve and how economies change. Drawing on recent work by psychologists, he identifies intentionality as the crucial variable and proceeds to demonstrate how intentionality emerges as the product of social learning and how it then shapes the economy's institutional foundations and thus its capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. "Understanding the Process of Economic Change" accounts not only for past institutional change but also for the diverse performance of present-day economies. This major work is therefore also an essential guide to improving the performance of developing countries.

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatisation of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. Offering a critique of the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom first describes three models most frequently used as the foundation for recommending state or market solutions. She then outlines theoretical and empirical alternatives to these models in order to illustrate the diversity of possible solutions. In the following chapters she uses institutional analysis to examine different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the tragedy of the commons argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organisations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.