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TRANSACTION COST ECONOMICS: THE PRECURSORS
Author(s) -
Williamson Oliver E.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
economic affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1468-0270
pISSN - 0265-0665
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0270.2008.00838.x
Subject(s) - transaction cost , orthodoxy , product (mathematics) , new institutional economics , internalization theory , economics , database transaction , neoclassical economics , industrial organization , positive economics , microeconomics , computer science , mathematics , history , geometry , archaeology , programming language
Theories commonly progress through four stages, from informal to pre‐formal to semi‐formal and fully formal. This paper reports on the earliest stage of transaction cost economics that extended from the 1920s to the 1970s. That the gestation stage lasted so long is partly because transaction cost economics departed significantly from the then‐prevailing economic orthodoxy. Also, and related, it is an interdisciplinary undertaking. As reported herein, transaction cost economics selectively combines economics, organisation theory and law and is the product of the contributions of some of the finest minds in those three fields.