Toward a Simple Economic Framework for Analysis of Business Ecosystems
Abstract
This chapter develops a progression of frameworks to analyze economic organization for both single- and multi-product production, culminating in a framework for studying business ecosystems. The first stage draws on transaction cost economics, focusing on how governance affects the costs of transactions. The second incorporates transaction value economics, highlighting how interactions can create value through mechanisms such as knowledge sharing. The third extends these perspectives by integrating insights from property rights economics, along with additional insights from transaction value economics, to account for how governance influences the value of future transactions via its impact on investment and innovation, with a particular focus on the latter. This progression provides a structured, economically grounded approach for analyzing coevolution and other defining features of business ecosystems within an antitrust-relevant framework – analysis that has become especially relevant and important with the proliferation of digital business ecosystems.
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