Oliver E. Williamson

Oliver Eaton Williamson ( born September 27, 1932 in Superior, Wisconsin) is an American economist. He became known as institutions economist who deals mainly with the transaction cost economics. In 2009, he won the Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded jointly with Elinor Ostrom.

Life

Since 1988, Oliver Williamson, Edgar F. Kaiser Professor of Business Administration, Professor of Economics and Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his bachelor's degree in 1955 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his MBA degree in 1960 from Stanford University and his doctorate (PhD) in 1963 from Carnegie Mellon University. Several universities in the world, he was awarded an honorary doctorate. The father of five children, is married to Dolores Celeni since 1957.

Works

Williamson became famous with two books:

• Markets and Hierarchies (1975 )
• The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (1985 )

Williamson trade-off

The impact on the welfare and the market price, resulting from a merger or acquisition can be analyzed with the Williamson trade-off.

According to the assumption of a concentrated firms produce at lower marginal costs due to economies of scale. Now We distinguish two cases: