Here’s the reading list for the undergraduate seminar in Organizational Economics that I taught this semester.
I don’t know of many other undergraduate organizational economics courses in United States colleges/universities. However, there are a few noteworthy exceptions that deserve a shout-out. Tom Nonnenmacher at nearby Allegheny College has an excellent course in “Organizations and Contracts.” Also, check out his book on “institutional and organizational analysis.”
Dick Langlois at UConn has a course called “The Economics of Organization.”
An old Peter Klein class also looks great, though geared toward PhD students. Jens Prufer’s reading list is great, but also looks like a graduate-level course.
Of course, there are a few classics missing from my reading list. That’s because I take a broad view of what’s encompassed by organizational economics (as does Prufer’s syllabus). Rather than an exclusive focus on the for-profit firm, we also discuss non-profits, criminal organizations, families, bureaucracies, and states. This is along the lines of what Robert Gibbons and John Roberts write in an overview of the field:
Moving beyond business firms, we also hope to see much more research on different organizational forms. Legislatures, government bureaus and departments, courts, political parties, clubs, cooperatives, mutuals, family firms, state-owned enterprises, charities and not-for-profits, hospitals, universities, and schools—all raise interesting organizational issues and deserve more attention than they have received.