The organization of the government itself is something which we ought to examine in a more self-conscious way - the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The mission that each of them has is mainly economic but should be informed by good organizational practices.
More Quotes by Oliver E. Williamson
My first jobs after graduation in 1955 were as a project engineer for G.E. and later with the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., where I met and married my wife, Dolores Celini.
The hypothesis that economic organization is the resultant of a series of historic accidents is intructive in that many organizational innovations appear to be the result of trial and error.
Vertical intergration is an organizational response to the contracting difficulties that attend intermediate product markets where trades that are supported by transaction-specific assets are exposed to hazard.
The remediableness criterion is an effort to deal symmetrically with real world institutions, both public and private, warts and all. The criterion is this: an extant mode of organization for which no superior feasible form of organization can be described and implemented with expected net gains is presumed to be efficient.
The lens of contract focuses predominantly on gains from trade whereas orthodoxy is focused on resource allocation.
My university teacher and mentor Kenneth Arrow remembers me as a student who asked good questions. Although I had not previously thought of myself in that way, on reflection I think that Arrow was right.