In my podcast, The Answer is Transaction Costs, I have been working on the problem of transactions and what it means to change aspects of purchase or sale without otherwise changing the product. One of the great insights of economist Yoram Barzel was that it makes no sense to talk about commodities in the abstract, because it is the precise features of accessing, delivering, and using the product that affect the cost of use. In fact, though, the insight is older. I had always heard of John R. Commons, one of the founders of the Institutionalist School of economics, but I had not read him until recently.
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