The analysis of the role of knowledge in the economics of governance provides a framework able to integrate the research programs of the resource-based theory of the firm and of the economics of transaction costs and overcome their own limits. Transaction costs economics pays little attention to organizational knowledge. The resource-based theory is not able to appreciate the role of
organizational constraints in shaping the rate and the direction of the growth of the firm. In the context provided by the economics of governance the interdependence among transaction, coordination and production is modelled as a micro-system where localized technological and organizational knowledge plays a central role.