Talk:Oliver E. Williamson

Chicago School?

There is no evidence he is part of the Chicago school. We do not know his views on monetarism or other concepts that would distinguish someone into the Chicago School. He's even published on some failings of the Chicago school. Until someone can provide evidence of his believes on issues like monetarism, it's inappropriate to put him into the Chicago School category when the only thing that is clear is that he subscribes to the ideas of New Institutional economics (which he arguably virtually invented). If no one proves his believes on monetary policy or efficient markets within a day, I'm going to remove the Chicago box since I see no evidence for it. Seelum (talk) 14:08, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The school of new institutional economics is not the same as the Chicago School. Coase influenced NIU, but it looks like none of the other economists have a connection to U of Chicago and I don't think they'd be classified as Chicagoan. I'm going to remove the template from the page, and edit the template. If anyone has any evidence that NIU really is considered part of the "Chicago School," we can reconsider.--Bkwillwm (talk) 00:18, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I also found this blog post which says that Williamson's work... "unlike the Chicago school..." http://anthonyclarkarend.com/internationalorgs/bainbridge-on-the-economics-nobel-and-oliver-williamson/ I have yet to find him listed anywhere as a member of the Chicago School.--Bkwillwm (talk) 04:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Williamson was my field adviser at Berkeley and I can assure you he would scoff at the notion of being lumped in with the Chicago School. Go to Google Books and looks for mentions of "Chicago School". All of them are made to contrast the TCE approach against Chicago. See also the exchange below from my talk page. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 08:28, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Oliver E. Williamson

moved here from User talk:Trialsanderrors

New institutional economics are part of what is called "Chicago School", therefore that template was correct. Most of Williamson's academic advisors were "Chicagoans", too. --bender235 (talk) 14:05, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

OEW got his Ph.D. at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon), where Simon, Cyert and March were at the time, and he's very explicit that that's where his intellectual roots are. Coase did his transaction cost work at Buffalo and didn't move to Chicago until 1964. If you think OEW has any connection or sympathies with the Chicago School you might want to pick up one of his books where he explicitly positions his work against the Chicago views (or "orthodoxy", as he calls it) on the firm and antitrust. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 16:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Revised/updated version of Williamson's biography

Hi everyone,

Please see my proposed change to Williamson's biography. This was written by the Haas School of Business, where Williamson professes and I work. The copyright has been cleared, etc. Does anyone object to me changing his biography to read the following?

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Oliver Eaton Williamson (born September 27, 1932), a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Department of Economics, and School of Law, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm."

Williamson, one of the world's most cited economists, shares the prize with Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

Williamson’s is the fifth Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for the University of California, Berkeley and its 21st overall in fields including physic, chemistry, and literature.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau said, "We congratulate Oliver on this well-deserved honor for his groundbreaking work in economics. … This award showcases the faculty excellence that resides at UC Berkeley and the level of contribution this institution makes to the country and the world."

"I remember reading Olly's work when I was in graduate school. I was blown away," said Richard Lyons, dean of the Haas School of Business and a faculty colleague of Williamson's. "There is great beauty in the way he integrated our thinking about markets and firms. His ideas still excite me.”

Williamson's work involves a multi-disciplinary field that he mapped out to study how varying organizational structures for markets and institutions affect economic activity. He is credited with co-founding "New Institutional Economics," which emphasizes the importance of formal institutions, as well as informal institutions such as social norms, and how they affect transaction costs.

Williamson has described his own work as a blending of soft social science with abstract economic theory. His insights have influenced everything from electricity deregulation in California to investment in Eastern Europe to human resource management in the technology industry

His focus on the costs of transactions has 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 has 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.[2]

Williamson, is a student of Ronald Coase, Herbert Simon and Richard Cyert. Williamson received his B.Sc. in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1955, M.B.A. from Stanford University in 1960, and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1963. From 1965 to 1983 he was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

He has held professorships in business administration, economics, and law at the University of California, Berkeley since 1988 and is currently the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus at the Haas School of Business.

Williamson is the author of several books, including The Mechanisms of Governance, the economics classic Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (1975), and 10 years later, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting. The latter is said to be the most frequently cited work in social science research.

Haas School faculty colleagues David Teece and Glenn Carroll presented new perspectives on Williamson’s seminal book Markets and Hierarchies in their new book Firms, Markets, and Hierarchies with contributions from Williamson himself, Teece, Carroll, Pablo Spiller, Kenneth Arrow, and many others 25 years after publication of Williamson’s original.

In describing Williamson's work, the Nobel committee said he "has argued that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest. The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement. The drawback of firms is that authority, which mitigates contention, can be abused.”

"Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets," the committee continued. "A key prediction of Williamson's theory, which has also been supported empirically, is therefore that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets."

Williamson is the Haas School’s second Nobel Prize Laureate. In 1994, the late John Harsanyi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in game theory, a mathematical theory of human behavior in competitive situations that has become a dominant tool for analyzing real-life conflicts in business, management, and international relations. Harsanyi shared the award from with fellow game theorists Reinhard Selten of Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitaet in Bonn, Germany, and John Nash of Princeton University.

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Thanks! nick_fradkin@haas.berkeley.edu (talk) 01:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello-I have two things. The first is that copyright will have to be handled more carefully. I've never included copyrighted material, so I'll just point you here. The second is that I think the tone is wrong for the encyclopedia. It contains stuff which could be used, but it reads as a press release promoting the Haas School, which isn't appropriate. CRETOG8(t/c) 02:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind the copyright issue, it is for one a conflict of interest to have a Haas School employee rewrite the article from scratch, and for two the draft doesn't improve on the current article (which definitely could be improved). ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 09:00, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

There probably is a conflict of interest (WP:COI), but Nick's open about that and it certainly doesn't prevent him from recommending changes. I do think that the specific text above is wrong for the encyclopedia. CRETOG8(t/c) 14:00, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Influences.

Is it ok to say that some of his work was highly influenced by Alfred Chandler. (I'm specifically looking at his work on m-form and diversification in large firms, Williamson 1975 does state that the multidivisional structure was one of the most important organizational innovations. Kendirangu (talk) 22:35, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

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