Above you see Oliver Williamson, an American economist, and one that I have never heard of. Mr. Williamson currently serves as the
Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics, and Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Williamson has a long list of accolades and qualifications that would only serve to bore you, so I'll let you imagine just how qualified he is. Along with wearing bow ties and looking smug, Williamson, as I have discovered, has made some contributions to the field of economics. So much so that he was awarded a Nobel prize. According to some guy who knows stuff about Williamson, "Oliver Williamson has reached the stratospheric level of being probably the most cited economist of all time."
On a more serious note, Williamson was a student of Ronald Coase, a recently deceased British economist. As a student of Coase, Williamson elaborated on transaction costs - perhaps Coase's finest contribution to the science of economics. From what I was able to decipher of the economic jargon, it seems that Williamson expounded upon Coase's transaction costs. He analyzed transaction costs and gave us a more detailed and complete explanation of their role and some different kinds. Smart dude...
Williamson's Nobel lecture is worth listening to. In it he discusses his passion - governance. This refers to the various rules and internal regulations an organization develops to "control" transactions. For our class, the Syllabus provides some governance but there are also campus regulations - in the Campus Administrative Manual and the Student Code of Conduct - that matter a good deal. Coupled with governance, of course, is enforcement.
ReplyDelete