Oliver Eaton Williamson (September 27, 1932 – May 21, 2020) was an American economist, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which he shared with Elinor Ostrom. law and economics. Williamson described his work as "a blend of soft social science and abstract economic theory".

Life and career

Oliver "Olly"

Williamson's dual enrollment between Ripon College and MIT As a Fulbright Distinguished Chair, in 1999 he taught economics at the University of Siena.

Found to be one of the most cited authors in the social sciences, in 2009, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for "his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm", sharing it with Elinor Ostrom. Williamson died on May 21, 2020, in Berkeley, California.

Theory

By drawing attention at a high theoretical level to equivalences and differences between market and non-market decision-making, management and service provision, Williamson was influential in the 1980s and 1990s debates on the boundaries between the public and private sectors.

His focus on the costs of transactions led Williamson to distinguish between repeated case-by-case bargaining on the one hand and relationship-specific contracts on the other. For example, the repeated purchasing of coal from a spot market to meet the daily or weekly needs of an electric utility would represent case-by-case bargaining. But over time, the utility is likely to form ongoing relationships with a specific supplier, and the economics of the relationship-specific dealings will be importantly different, he argued.

Other economists have tested Williamson's transaction-cost theories in empirical contexts. One important example is a paper by Paul L. Joskow, "Contract Duration and Relationship-Specific Investments: Empirical Evidence from Coal Markets", in American Economic Review, March 1987. The incomplete contracts approach to the theory of the firm and corporate finance is partly based on the work of Williamson and Coase.

Williamson was credited with the development of the term "information impactedness", which applies in situations of unequal access to information. As he explained in Markets and Hierarchies, it exists "mainly because of uncertainty and opportunism, though bounded rationality is involved as well. It exists when true underlying circumstances relevant to the transaction, or related set of transactions, are known to one or more parties but cannot be costlessly discerned by or displayed for others". Thus, Williamson is to be counted among those who have taken issue with the view that the firm is another type of market, characterized by a nexus of contracts. In his own words: "But to regard the corporation only as a nexus of contracts misses much of what is truly distinctive about this mode of governance".

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

thumb|Williamson's pipe holder on display at the [[Nobel Prize Museum]]

In 2009, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Williamson and Elinor Ostrom to share the 10-million Swedish kronor (£910,000; $1.44 million) prize "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm". Williamson, in the BBC's paraphrase of the academy's reasoning, "developed a theory where business firms served as structures for conflict resolution".

thumb|330x330px|Oliver E. Williamson and Elinor Ostrom at the 2009 Nobel Prize Press Conference.

Personal life

He met his wife Dolores Celini in 1957, while they both lived in Washington, D.C. Beginning in fiscal year 2013, the Williamson Award has been presented to the following faculty members:

  • 2013–2014: Professor John Morgan
  • 2014–2015: Professor Teck Ho
  • 2015–2016: Professor Toby Stuart
  • 2016–2017: Professor Andy Rose
  • 2019–2020: Professor Nancy Wallace
  • 2022–2023: Associate Professor Ned Augenblick

Selected papers

Books

See also

  • New institutional economics

References

  • Oliver E. Williamson at University of California, Berkeley
  • including the Nobel Lecture on 8 December 2009 Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression
  • Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc

From the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley:

  • HNW Story
  • Press Release on Williamson's sharing the Nobel Prize in economics with Elinor Ostrom

From the University of California, Berkeley:

  • Press Release

In The News:

  • San Francisco Chronicle
  • Wall Street Journal (October 12, 2009)
  • Wall Street Journal (October 12, 2009)
  • Wall Street Journal (October 12, 2009)
  • Wall Street Journal (October 13, 2009)
  • New York Times
  • Washington Post
  • ABC7 News, San Francisco
  • KTVU, San Francisco