Markets as Mobilizers of Firms: Models for Capital Valuations From Economic Sociology

Abstract

Guidance to how capital values of firms change comes from a model of performance in which firms cue on peer producers in their particular market. My model lays out a two-dimensional map of market varieties, each dimension being a ratio assessing sensitivity upstream to sensitivity downstream in valuations for a representative firm. The projections examine market viabilities and invoke substitutabilities and boundary mechanisms of markets. They point to the importance of discontinuities and switches. The paper goes on to probe the network phenomenology which underlies this model of firms in markets, and thereby it suggests new ‘takes’ on ‘network firms’ and ‘new economy’.

Key words:

• valuation
• cumulate-capitialization
• embed
• quality
• upstream/downstream
• critic-observer
• expectation