Coase’s Transactional Principle in The Light of System Economic Theory

Abstract

The problem of optimization of transaction costs is investigated in the article from system economic theory. The concept of a transaction is interpreted as an interaction that affects the products’ seller and the products’ buyer and the immediate system environment of each of them. The representation of such an environment in the form of a tetrad, which is a relatively stable complex of four basic subsystems of object, project, process, and environmental types, makes it possible to trace the consequences of the transaction impulse in the economic zone of the seller and the buyer. Based on the systemic expansion of the concept of transaction, we analyze the transaction costs and benefits arising from the transaction in all four subsystems of the internal space of the firm and its immediate external environment. When formulating the modified Coase’s transactional principle, which determines the optimal size of a firm depending on the ratio between transactional (external) and administrative (internal) costs, we take into account the change in the firm’s “effect of influence” on the immediate environment as boundaries of the firm expand. Considering the “effect of influence” becomes especially important in the context of the growing development of the ecosystem form of organizing economic interaction, characterized by an increased density and tightness of intersubjective relations within the ecosystem. Attention is drawn to the positive aspects of “institutional friction” in the economy, which allows a new approach to determining the optimal level of transaction costs. The expediency of considering the “double tetrad” as a combination of the seller’s tetrad and the buyer’s tetrad as a system unit of market analysis is substantiated.