Literatures review on transaction costs measurement advances

Abstract

Theory of transaction costs and its measurement has been regarded as the focus since its being put forward by scholars. Additionally, researches on the measurement are relatively less in China. This paper devotes to reviewing and analyzing present advanced methodologies of transaction costs measurement. And it summarizes the difficulties of measurement based on the concept of transaction costs. Furthermore, it presents three difficulties of measuring. They are unclear definition of transaction costs, unobservable costs in non-market and the unable replacement of opportunity costs. It concludes the measuring methods both on the macro and micro aspects. On macro aspect, it introduces methods as direct measuring, model-built measuring and margin analysis measuring. On micro aspect, it introduces methods as buy-sale price margin, typical reference quantities method, investigating method and data statistics method.