Per Bylund

author of "Problem of Production: A New Theory of the Firm"

November 4, 2015

Per Bylund is assistant professor of entrepreneurship and Records-Johnston professor of free enterprise in the School of Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on issues in entrepreneurship, strategic management and organizational economics – especially where they overlap and intersect with regulation and policy issues. Bylund was previously in the department of entrepreneurship of Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University and prior to that, the management department of Trulaske College of Business and the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri.

Bylund is an associate fellow of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, a research fellow at the McQuinn Center of Entrepreneurial Leadership and an Associated Scholar with the Mises Institute, as well as senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises-institutet i Sverige.

His research aims to explain the market process of wealth-creation and economic development with a focus on organizations, institutions, strategic management and entrepreneurship. He has several papers and a forthcoming book on the theory of the firm, especially targeting and attempting to illuminate the economic function of the firm – both to the entrepreneur and as a means to explain the evolution of market structure. His research has been published in several scholarly journals, including the Journal of Management Studies, Managerial and Decision Economics, the Journal of the History of Economic Thought and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

He also serves as the book review editor of the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management Studies, the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and the Molinari Review. He furthermore edits a book series on Austrian economics published by Agenda Publishing.

"Problem of Production: A new Theory of the Firm" develops a theory of the firm as an economic phenomenon with unique market value grounded in specialization. In contrast to most existing theories, it places the firm within the context of the evolving market process and as a 'missing' piece of the puzzle of economic development, progress and wealth creation. The firm here emerges as a means for the implementation of innovative productive solutions that cannot be brought about through market exchange.

This theory successfully places the firm as a function in the market process that helps us explain the dynamics of market progress and economic growth. It also separates economic from legal aspects, and therefore produces a theory of the firm that is neither dependent on, nor refers to the 'legal firm,' separating the theory from many others. By doing this, the theory adds a new dimension to the economics of organizations, the economics of institutions, suggests increased applicability of microeconomic theory and supplies a previously missing piece in the Austrian economic theory of the market.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2016-honorees/per-bylund

Last Updated: 12 January 2022