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How much light does “The Nature of the Firm” throw on today’s corporate landscape? The young Mr Coase first grew interested in the workings of firms when he travelled around America’s industrial heartland on a scholarship in 1931-32. He abandoned his textbooks and asked businessmen why they did what they did. He has long chided his fellow economists for scrawling hieroglyphics on blackboards rather than looking at what it actually takes to run a business. So it seems reasonable to test his ideas by the same empirical standards.
Mr Coase’s theory continues to explain some of the most puzzling problems in modern business. Take the rise of vast and highly diversified business groups in the emerging world, such as India’s Tata group and Turkey’s Koc Holding. Many Western observers dismiss these as relics of a primitive form of capitalism. But they make perfect sense when you consider the transaction costs of going to the market. Where trust in established institutions is scarce, it makes sense for companies to stretch their brands over many industries. And where capital and labour markets are inefficient, it makes equal sense for companies to allocate their own capital and train their own loyalists.

A. 어휘
corporate landscape 회사풍경. workings 작용, 기구.
heartland 중심지. chide 비난하다, 꾸중하다. scrawl 휘갈겨 쓰다.
hieroglyphics 象形文字(상형문자), 판독하기 힘든 문서.
empirical 경험주의의, 경험의. diversified 다양화된.
Holding 지주회사. dismiss 해고하다. relics 遺物(유물), 遺蹟(유적).
primitive 원시적인. established institutions 기존제도.
allocate 할당하다. loyalists 忠臣(충신).