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Industrial purchasing is a growing discipline with a broad scope of research issues. Research contributions vary greatly with respect to problem issues, the level of analysis, research methods and the application of theoretical frameworks. Literature reviews in the purchasing research field give the reader some tracks back to current theoretical frameworks, for instance industrial buying behavior or economics of organization. Notwithstanding, explicit and precise references to these frameworks are usually rare compared to the marketing science tradition which has built its research tradition and theoretical framework on established sciences, e.g. micro economics, organization science, sociology and psychology. This article presents and compares some contributions from micro economic theory, industrial buying behavior and inter‐organizational theory that make appropriate theoretical approaches to industrial purchasing research.

The aim of this section is to develop a model of the linkage between the macro-dynamics of price and the micro-dynamics of individual buyers and sellers, drawing on classical micro-economic theory (Jehle & Reny, 2001). Jehle and Reny's book is in three parts. The first part discusses economic agents, namely consumers and firms. The second part discusses markets, in other words what happens when the economic agents interact; and welfare, namely the social value of the outcome. The third part is on strategic behaviour, covering game theory, information economics and auctions and mechanism design. Here, the emphasis will be on the core concepts rather than on the mathematical details. In emphasising the core concepts, attention will be drawn to the fact that these core concepts have a much wider range than simply micro-economics.

Compares Stackelberg’s Grundlagen der theoretischen Volkswirtschaftslehre with a standard modern micro‐economic textbook. Reveals some confusing shortcomings in the English translation. Focuses on unique peculiarities of Stackelberg’s analysis of the price formation on imperfect markets. Suggests that it might be an effective approach in a course on micro‐economics to combine a modern textbook with Grundlagen since they would complement each other in a number of aspects: at least, but very important, in the different emphasis of the time aspect. Finds that in general the English translation of Grundlagen by A.T. Peacock is of an outstanding quality. Mistakes are rare and hardly ever confusing, with the exceptions related to the perfect market and pure competition concepts. So, if one uses the English translation of Grundlagen as a supplement in a course on micro‐economics one may devote some attention to these concepts. It is quite possible that Stackelberg, at least in Grundlagen, is not convinced of the potential compatibility of Chamberlin’s theory of monopolistic competition and the Edgeworth‐Bertrand oligopoly theory with the method he proposes to derive at “peculiarities of price formation in the imperfect market”. Hence the absence of any reference in Grundlagen to these theories may not be at all accidental.

The analysis of the interactions between the criminal economy and the financial markets has not yet been systematically studied by the economists. This study belongs to a current research interested in this area, ie the economic analysis of money laundering. The work is organised as follows.

The purpose of this study is to investigate if a firm's exchange complexity profile (that is, the linkages between the firm and its environment) influences investor behavior at the negotiation table where a firm valuation is derived.

The authors utilize Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Specifically, the authors utilize fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), a QCA variant that allows the researcher to assign graduated membership in sets.

When the authors dichotomize their positions as either higher stakes that favor the seller (high capital, low equity, high valuation) or lower stakes that favor the buyer (low capital, high equity, low valuation), and when the authors focus primarily on the equity outcome, the authors find that investors adopt a reductionist stance that adheres to a transaction cost economics logic under conditions of lower stakes and higher complexity as well as higher stakes and lower complexity conditions. The authors interpret this to mean that equity serves as a counter-balancing lever for a firm's exchange complexity configuration.

On a theoretical level, the authors showcase the exchange complexity framework and differentiate its position within the extant frameworks that address a firm's competitive advantage. More generally, the authors note that this framework brings the discipline of micro-economics and the field of strategic management closer together, providing scholars with a new tool enabling research across industries for the portfolio level of analysis.

Historically, the study of the world’s economy was classified into Micro-economics and Macro-economics. Perhaps, contemporary economists should learn from the universe which we are part of. Let us name this as “Uni-economics.” Many scientists have found that sunspots affect human behavior. Some research findings even relate the 11-year periodic cycle to war and peace of mankind. It is also widely known in the medical profession that sunspot radiation actually affects our human body. With all these evidence in mind, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how sunspot activities can affect business growth since 1960s when the global economy was building up fast since the Second World War.

The econometrics methodology deployed is in three steps. First, time series techniques were deployed to track down the changes of Sunspot Counts over the last 48 years on the world’s four main financial indices, i.e., S & P, FTSE, Nikkei and HSI. Second, the long run function of a particular stock price index could be specified as a natural logarithm transformation function. Finally, Granger’s co-integration methodology is deployed to test the equilibrium relationships.

This paper has harnessed a set of system and process that can ensure the long-term productivity and business growth of firms in this contemporary business world. It is predicted with 80 percent confidence that the next property depression in some affluent cities will happen in 2014/2015, with the global financial tsunami coming in 2019.

More important is how organizations can make use of the trade-wind and avoid the counter-wind from the Uni-economics phenomena for their quality, productivity and business growth, in accordance to the Deming Cycle. As recalled from the previous two oil crisis (around 1975, 1986) and the two financial tsunami (1997 and 2008), 40-year-old organizations that can still survive today must have done something good, despite all these turmoil confronting them.

The theme of micro‐foundation of economic theory has not been adequately addressed. This is true even of those who pioneered the area of micro‐foundation of macro‐economics. The great missing link in economic theory, both of micro‐economics and macro‐economics, is the inability to methodologically integrate ethical and moral values through preference mapping. This missing methodology disables the study of institutions, policy formulation and normative statements of structural transformation. On the other hand, such issues are once again haunting the human race in the murky and troubled global relations today – from capitalism to war to governance. This paper addresses the preference mapping and embedding of ethical and moral issues as endogenous dynamics in economic theory. The approach is rigorous and methodological.

Surveys 72 female undergraduates at a US Midwestern university to establish whether or not people distort the purchase price of goods as a means of impression management, an, if so, whether they under‐ or over‐report the price, depending on their level of self‐esteem. Finds that people with low self‐esteem are more likely to use price as a surrogate indicator for taste. Links this to marketing theory in that consumers purchase products for their meaning as well as their purpose and as symbols to demonstrate social status and to communicate self‐image. Takes into account micro‐economics and the price‐quality relationship. Supposes that consumers would buy the cheaper article when confronted with two similar items at different prices but confirms that this is not necessarily the case.

The purpose of this paper is to help understanding the value of food resources (FRs). This may raise global awareness on their importance in macro- and micro-economics.

The relationship of FRs with human life was analyzed through literature review to illustrate their real value. Association of FRs production with the probability of becoming a high income country was estimated by analyzing the relevant data published by FAOSTAT, World Bank and United Nations to illustrate their value in macro-economy. Analyzing the interrelationship of prices with their attributes through literature review and the correlation of the relevant data published by FAOSTAT and OECD was undertaken to create a mathematical model for pricing FRs.

The real value of FRs is unaccountable, which makes their economic value (price) be not always determined on market. Increase in the probability of becoming a high income country with increase in FRs production indicates that their shortage may bottleneck macro-economic development. A mathematical model has been created for estimating the economic value of FRs.

These findings are applicable for managing (or administrating), pricing or evaluating FRs, analyzing their economic status, developing business and predicting tendency in micro-economy. They are also vital for managing or developing macro-economy. The findings should be useful for farmers, food companies, governmental agents, individuals, etc.

This is the first to report these findings. This is a significant progress in FRs research and valuable for education.

Two major advances in the theory of the firm and (micro)economics more generally are arguably transaction costs economics (TCE) and the theory of firm resources. TCE has originally been applied to the theory of the firm, but found applications in virtually all fields of economic inquiry. The theory of firm resources currently spans much of the industrial organisation (IO) and strategic management literature. In some fields, e.g. diversification, it has already acquired dominant status. Despite significant progress in TCE there still seem to remain significant unresolved issues. Indeed we claim that transaction cost economics fail to supply convincing answers to the issues of the nature of the firm (why do firms exist?), and their essence (running a business). It offers a partial explanation of the “nature” and little on the “essence”. The resource value view complements the nature side and goes far beyond on the essence issue. It provides a fruitful starting point for an integrative framework. This, we suggest, should be based on the resource value perspective story and craft (dynamic) transaction costs in the ensuing evolutionary tale.