Technological change and industry dynamics: A transaction cost theory of the great merger movement in American industry, 1895-1904

The dissertation attempts to integrate three related but distinct lines of research: Williamson's work on transaction cost economics, Nelson and Winter's work on evolutionary economics, and Chandler's work on American business history. It draws on insights from transaction cost economics to relate firm and industry behaviour to the underlying technological influences on the industry's dynamics. It then uses this framework to present a theory about the turn-of-the-century merger movement in American manufacturing. The theory is tested against the alternatives using evidence from the economic and technological history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and Ralph Nelson's data on the turn-of-the-century mergers.