tion has focused on organizational structures in
order to understand the rationale behind firms’
contractual arrangements (see Alchian and Dem-.setz, 1972; Furubotn and Richter, 1997) . Broadly
defined as the costs of enabling production activi-
ties, transaction costs may be lowered through the
selection of appropriate contractual forms that
match the physical attributes of the activities undertaken and the institutional characteristics of