Armen Alchian was an American economist born on April 12,
1914 in Fresno, California. Alchian
attended Fresno State in 1932. He then
transferred to Stanford in 1934 and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree from
Stanford in 1936. Alchian continued at
Stanford and received his PhD in 1943.
He served in the US Air Force, was an economist with the RAND
Corporation and then became a full-time professor at UCLA.
Alchian did not publish many articles, however, the articles
that he did publish are very well known.
Alchian is famous for his text, titled Exchange and Production, and the research he performed relating to
property rights. Alchian used his
property rights research to explain discrimination and reasoning behind labor
unions.
Alchian passed away at the age of 98 on February 19, 2013 in
his home. After a lengthy career
influencing the minds of economics, he is still remembered by his work and
missed by many today.
I was not familiar with Armen Alchian before being assigned
him as my alias. I believe that his work
is very relevant to the course because he studied exchange, production and
property rights, which are all vital parts of an organization and affect an
organization’s structure.
This is Alchian's paper with Harold Demsetz, which explains that firms exist to solve the problem of team production. Somebody needs to coordinate the team and that person who does the coordination becomes the residual claimant on what the firm produces. This is a paper I like a lot and is a good theory of capitalism of the type where firms are proprietorships. It doesn't talk about what happens when the manager is other than the owner, which is its own separate issue.
ReplyDelete