Liberty Fund is proud to present, in two volumes, 'The Collected Works of Armen A Alchian', bringing together Alchian's most influential essays, articles, editorials, and lectures to provide a comprehensive record of his thinking on a broad range of topics in economics. As various and as specific as some of this collection's topics are, they are unified, as editor Daniel K Benjamin writes, by "both a coherent methodology for doing economics, and a view of the world that celebrates the importance of individual liberty." Benjamin goes on to state that, in Alchian's view, "the purpose of theory is never theory in and of itself; it is instead to help individuals understand the world around them."

VOLUME 1 -- Introduction; Uncertainty, Evolution and Economic Theory; Biological Analogies in the Theory of the Firm: Comment; Review of The Investment Decision; The Meaning of Utility Measurement; Information Costs, Pricing and Resource Unemployment; What Is the Best System?; Market Value Effects of Take-Overs? An All-or-Nothing; Tender of Conjectures; Information, Martingales and Prices; Why Money?; Trading Stamps (Armen A. Alchian and Benjamin Klein); There Really Is a Free Service; Why Brand Names?; The Chef, Gourmet and Gourmand; Costs and Outputs; Cost; Reliability of Progress Curves in Airframe Production; On a Correct Measure of Inflation; Be Wary of the CPI Commission Report!; Theres Only 1 Cause for Inflation; Problems of Rising Prices; Effects of Inflation; Redistribution of Wealth Through Inflation; More Evidence on Inflation-Caused Wealth Redistribution; Inflation and Distribution of Income and Wealth; Effects of Inflation upon Stock Prices; How the Government Gains from Inflation; The Meaning and Validity of the Inflation-Induced Lag of Wages Behind Prices; Real Wages in the North During the Civil War: Mitchells Data Reinterpreted; Review of the Council of Economic Advisers 1972 Report: A Comment; An Introduction to Confusion; Abbott and Costello in Washington; Theres Gas in Your Future; Oil Decontrol Windfall: Magical or Real?; Energy Economics; Its Easy to End Gas Shortage; To Be Fair, Let Each Solve His Own Fuel Crisis; The Economics of Power; Summary Notes on Misleading Economic Jargon; Words: Musical or Meaningful?; Rent; Allocative Efficiency with Edgeworth-Bowley Boxes; The Rate of Interest, Fishers Rate of Return over Costs and Keynes Internal Rate of Return; Linear Progress Curves Are Illusions; Linear Progress Curves Are Not Illusions; Why the Learning Curve Is Convex on Double Log Scale; Review of Dynamic Equipment Policy; Meanings and Uses of Equations and Models; Review of Essays in Economics and Econometrics: A Volume in Honour of Harold Hotelling; Economic Replacement Policy; Principles of Statistical Analysis; Univariate Analysis; Bivariate Analysis; Multivariate Analysis. VOLUME 2 Introduction; Some Economics of Property; Some Economics of Property Rights; Pricing and Society; The Property Rights Paradigm; Property Rights [1987]; Property Rights [1993]; The Bishops and the Lay Commission: Comments on Two Letters; Some Implications of Recognition of Property Right Transactions Costs; The Beneficiaries of Cleaner Air; Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organisation; Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process; First Negotiation, First Refusal Rights; Decision Sharing and Expropriable Specific Quasi-Rents: A Theory of First National Maintenance Corporation v. NLRB; Reminiscences of Errors: A Tribute in Honour of Dean William H. Meckling on His Retirement; Specificity, Specialisation, and Coalitions; Reflections on the Theory of the Firm; Concluding Remarks; The Firm is Dead; Long Live the Firm: A Review of Oliver Williamsons The Economic Institutions of Capitalism; Development of Economic Theory and Antitrust: A View from the Theory of the Firm; Thoughts on the Theory of the Firm: A Tribute to Erik G. Furubotn; Vertical Integration and Regulation in the Telephone Industry; Private Property and the Relative Cost of Tenure; Economics of Tenure; Competition, Monopoly and the Pursuit of Money; Review of the Economics of Discrimination; The Meaning of Collusion; Electrical Equipment Collusion: Why and How; Dollars or Scholars: The Economics of College Football; The Basis of Some Recent Advances in the Theory of Management of the Firm; Incentives in the United States; Market Prices, Property and Behaviour; Customs, Behaviour, and Property Rights; An Economist Looks at Secondary Education in California; Cost Effectiveness of Cost Effectiveness; An Economic Analysis of the Market for Scientists and Engineers; On Private Property and Freedom; Economic Laws and Political Legislation; Corporate Management and Property Rights; Private Rights to Property: The Basis of Corporate Governance and Human Rights; On Corporations: A Visit with Smith; Constitutional Baselines by Virtual Contract: A General Theory and Its Application to Regulatory Takings; The Economics of Rational Assistance; The Economic and Social Impact of Free Tuition.