This paper provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature in transaction cost economics (TCE) across multiple social science disciplines and business fields. We show how TCE has branched out from its economic roots to examine empirical phenomena in several other areas. We find TCE is increasingly being applied not only to business-related fields such as accounting, finance, marketing, and organizational theory, but also to areas outside of business including political science, law, public policy, and agriculture and health. With few exceptions, however, the use of TCE reasoning to inform empirical research in these areas is piecemeal. We find that there is considerable support of many of the central tenets of TCE, but we also observe a number of lingering theoretical and empirical issues that need to be addressed. We conclude by discussing the implications of these issues and outlining directions for future theoretical and empirical work.

The modernization of the banking sector, and particularly the big four state owned commercial banks, has a top priority on the Chinese reform agenda. Three of the four state banks found foreign strategic investors as minority shareholders and domestic banks now face more competition from global players since the country's WTO commitments came fully into effect at the end of 2006. A comprehensive approach to reform aims at pushing China's state banks into the league of global leading financial institutions within a few years time. But is this aim feasible despite prevalent state dominance? To shed light on the role and impact of the state in promoting sound risk management practices this paper focuses on the political economy of law implementation. Two main conclusions are drawn: (1) the direction of action is significantly different from reform outcomes due to weak incentives to enforce respective policies and as a consequence non-performing loan accumulation continues; and (2) on a more general level banking regulation in China illustrates that a normative approach based on international best practice is insufficient to address the issue of financial stability in many emerging and developing countries because it neglects the role of the institutional embeddedness of banking reform.

The main aim is to question why we don't see more firms petitioning for import relief. It is well accepted that petitioning itself can restrain imports, lead to higher prices and hence higher profits (in the short run). What prevents more firms from filing for protection? It may be that petitioning reflects cost inefficiency on the part of the petitioning firm, and concerns about revealing this information might act as a deterrent for firms to come forward with their complaints. However, in a declining industry where a large number of firms are contemplating exit, petitioning could be a signal that the firm expects to remain in the market for the near future. The signaling hypothesis is tested by comparing the stock market response of an antidumping petition for petitioning firms and non-petitioning firms producing the same product.

Scholars have started to focus on the ways in which firms manage their reputations through collective action. Collective reputation management is most often carried out through trade associations (TAs). But what do these TAs actually do? How do they further their members' interests with stakeholders like regulators, industry financial analysts, employees, suppliers, and the media? Informed by a rich set of 43 qualitative interviews with the trade associations (TAs) representing the UK's 24 largest business sectors, the paper builds a model of the reputational incentives that drives the dynamic relationship between trade associations, firms and multiple stakeholder groups. The paper's preliminary empirical research coupled with the conceptual model provides five directions for future research.