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Oliver E. Williamson




His focus on the costs of transactions have 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 transation-cost theories in empirical contexts. One important example is a paper by Markets ," in American Economic Review , March 1987 .


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  • The Mechanisms of Governance ISBN 0195132602

  • The Economic Institutions of Capitalism ISBN 0029348218

  • The Nature of the Firm: Origins, Evolution, and Development ISBN 0195083563



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