Inside the Firm
Brad DeLong notes Sony’s internal conflicts over licensing and copy protection. The consumer electronics division sees the world differently from the entertainment division. This is a good example of why it’s not right to think, as Brink Lindsey does, that a Coasian picture of markets and firms accurately describes the social organization of the economy. Firms are not simply dictatorships established as the result of a transactions cost calculation. I wrote about this at slightly greater length a while ago, here and here.