Classic 1937 essay, inspired by the question: if market economies are successful, why do we have firms (companies), rather than large numbers of individual free

Classic 1937 essay, inspired by the question: if market economies are successful, why do we have firms (companies), rather than large numbers of individual free agents contracting with each other? And under what conditions do firms have an advantage vs. a market system that goes all the way down to the individual? People may also find Yochai Benkler's 2002 followup applying this sort of analysis to open source software: http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html