Transaction costs as a metapolicy

Abstract

This article proposes the original consideration of transaction cost as a metapolicy. This concept has expanded beyond firm-market relations, affecting corporate integration, blocking market formation, functioning of economic systems, government costs, bargaining among political factions and between voters and politicians. It explores the functions or benefits of transaction cost economics, highlighting their importance in situations of asymmetric information and in the choice of institutional arrangements. It discusses the minimization of transaction costs as a goal but in view of efficiency, realizing that the formation of markets may demand that functions and transaction costs be added, given that economic agents have a bounded rationality. A topical approach is taken in legislative, judicial and corporate decisions, such as mergers and acquisitions, capital markets and intellectual property issues. The methodology used throughout the present work was to identify the problem of efficiency in public management, by the research about the state of the art about the manipulation of the concept of transaction cost, especially with regard to the application of this idea in public governance, with the proposal to launch the seed for the theoretical and experimental deepening of the articulation of a metapolicy centered on the idea of transaction costs. The method was essentially descriptive-discursive. It is concluded by the recommendation of the use of transaction costs in the decision-making process by the public manager in relation to public policies in general, sometimes being a decisive criterion, others not, but always useful because of the potential impact on the solution adopted.