5Vote!
orgtheory.net (Free subscription) | 5 hours ago
This last weekend I ran into an interesting 2006 interview with Oliver Williamson, by Geoffrey Hodgson and David Gintis. Here’s an interesting comment on theorizing: My recommendation is that all would-be theories of firm and market organization be examined with respect to the four precepts of pragmatic methodology: first, keep it simple; second, get it right; third, [...]
4Vote!
Kempton - ideas Revolutionary (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Douglass North, 1993 recipient of the Nobel prize in economics, talks about the 2009’s laureates, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. [via Gary M C Shiu] Posted in Economics, Nobel-Prize, Video, World, YouTube
4Vote!
The Green Changemakers (Free subscription) | 11/15/2009
by Derek Wall - Another Green World Derek Wall was the last Principal Male Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales. "How to be green? Many people have asked us this important question. It's really very simple and requires no expert knowledge or complex skills. Here's the answer. Consume less. Share more. Enjoy life. " Penny Kemp and Derek Wall This blog promotes anti-capitalism, green...
3Vote!
Another Green World (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
I was amazed to find that Elinor Ostrom, a 76-year-old professor, had won the Nobel Prize for economics. While everyone else seemed to be asking: "Elinor who?" I was celebrating the fact that my favourite political economist had picked up the award. Ostrom - Lin to her friends apparently - shares the prize with Professor Oliver Williamson. While Williamson is not a radical thinker and uses...
5Vote!
Angry Bear (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Robert Waldmann Don't say you weren't warned. I am trying to understand the effects of the switch from mechanically controlled machine tools to electronically controlled machine tools and then to digitally controlled machine tools. I don't really know much about machine tools, but, then again, I don't know much about firms or the business cycle either. My thoughts after the jump. I warn again, don't...
7Vote!
EconLog (Free subscription) | 10/28/2009
1. From Poverty to Prosperity is supposed to ship to distributors next week. I'll believe it when I see it. So far, I have not seen any printed version--only electronic galleys. There will be no review copies available prior to the shipping date, which is going to make it hard to start out with any momentum in terms of sales. In the absence of any reviews, I will tell you that in my opinion It's a...
5Vote!
Environmental and Urban Economics (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
According to this article , Columbia University plans to move some Nobel Laureate faculty from their current Medical School location to a new location. Will this raise or lower productivity of the Medical School as a whole? Presuming that the Nobel Laureates offer positive local spillover effects (is this always true?), the losers will be their current neighbors. The article quotes a colleague of theirs...
5Vote!
BizKnowledge Watch (Free subscription) | 10/23/2009
The 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science has been awarded to Elionor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson in recognition of their work on economic governance. Ostrom, the first woman to win the prize since it was founded in 1968, has demonstrated how common property can be successfully managed by user association. Williamson has developed a [...]
4Vote!
The Mighty Quinn Media Machine (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
We had a big crowd in for Trivia Night on Tuesday, as 20 teams took part in the fun. We had some strong scores for both US Historic Places Trivia and Russell Crowe Film Trivia, and especially for the latter (eight teams got perfect scores). General Knowledge was a bit tougher, but the same team, Captain Planet Just Got Arrrested For Sexual Harrassment, led throughout the night going into IQ Trivia....
5Vote!
Unenumerated (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
Often in political parlance the phrase "the market" is used quite broadly to cover a wide variety of voluntary economic institutions, including firms, non-profit organizations, families, and so on in addition to markets proper. But traditional neoclassical economics is about ideal markets proper: instantaneous buying and selling on a costless spot exchange. Ronald Coase started expanding...
3Vote!
The Economist (Free subscription) | 10/20/2009
We can do better than talk about size CHARLES CALOMIRIS has a piece on the too-big-to-fail problem in today's Wall Street Journal, which would benefit significantly by focusing more on what is meant by big. He writes:Oliver Williamson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, just won the Nobel Prize for his pathbreaking work on the "boundaries of the firm," specifically for...
4Vote!
Indian Express (Free subscription) | 10/20/2009
Building economic models usually involves stripping the world down to its most essential features. But simple theories often struggle to explain the way things really work. Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University and Oliver Williamson of the University of California at Berkeley.
7Vote!
The Becker-Posner Blog (Free subscription) | 10/19/2009
Oliver Williamson, an economist who won half a Nobel prize last week, has made important contributions to a field of economics that is not as well known as it should be: "organization economics." This is a field, closely related to a branch of sociology called organization theory, to which pioneering contributions were made by Alfred Chandler, Herbert Simon, and Ronald Coase, as well as...
5Vote!
PSD Blog - World Bank Group (Free subscription) | 10/19/2009
This year's Nobel prize for economics went to Oliver Williamson and Einor Ostrom - both known for grounding their work in the real world. The committee perhaps wisely shunned researchers in finance or macroeconomics who are still coming to terms with the financial crisis and global recession. No such shyness from the judges for the Ig Nobel Prizes - committed to showcasing improbable research that...
7Vote!
The Becker-Posner Blog (Free subscription) | 10/19/2009
Oliver Williamson's influential contributions to the theory of firms were the stimulus for our discussion topic this week of the analysis of organizations. Posner gives an excellent discussion of various factors that determine organizational structure and efficiency, such as conflicts between principles, like stockholders, and agents, like employees and managers, the ease of communicating information...
Videos