IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/revpoe/v23y2011i1p1-24.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Nobel Prize for Governance and Institutions: Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Earl
  • Jason Potts

Abstract

This paper reviews the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics jointly awarded to Oliver Williamson for his work on governance in organizations and the boundaries of the firm, and to Elinor Ostrom for her work on the governance of common pool resources. We review the careers and the research contributions of Williamson and Ostrom to the theory and analysis of economic institutions of governance. Both winners of this Prize for 'economic governance' are thoroughly deserved, yet like the Hayek-Myrdal Prize of 1974 their respective approaches, methods and findings are almost diametrically opposed. Williamson offers a top-down contracts-based solution to the incentive problems of opportunism in corporate governance, whereas Ostrom offers a bottom-up communication-based solution to the governance opportunities of community resources. We offer some critical comments on Williamson's analytic work and discussion of the potential for further application of Ostrom's case-study based experimental methodology. We conclude with a suggested third nominee to make better sense of how these two great scholars' works fit together, namely George Richardson.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Earl & Jason Potts, 2011. "A Nobel Prize for Governance and Institutions: Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 1-24.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:23:y:2011:i:1:p:1-24
    DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2011.526291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09538259.2011.526291
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09538259.2011.526291?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baumol, William J, 1982. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, March.
    2. Foss, Nicolai J. (ed.), 1997. "Resources, Firms, and Strategies: A Reader in the Resource-Based Perspective," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198781790.
    3. McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen, 2006. "The Bourgeois Virtues," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226556635, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chanteau, Jean-Pierre & Labrousse, Agnès, 2013. "L’institutionnalisme méthodologique d’Elinor Ostrom : quelques enjeux et controverses," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 14.
    2. Tae-Hee Jo, 2016. "What If There Are No Conventional Price Mechanisms?," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 327-344, April.
    3. Bidisha Mandal & Timothy Lawrence, 2017. "Managing the Commons: How Extension Facilitates Local Participation to Manage Natural Resources," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 39(3), pages 499-515.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean-Marc Siroën, 1993. "Marchés contestables, différenciation des produits et discrimination des prix," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 44(3), pages 569-592.
    2. Peter Kuhn, 1982. "Malfeasance in Long Term Employment Contracts: A New General Model with an Application to Unionism," NBER Working Papers 1045, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Shamsul Arifeen Khan Mamun, 2012. "Stochastic estimation of cost frontier: evidence from Bangladesh," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 211-227, May.
    4. Makoto Yano, 2005. "Coexistence of large firms and less efficient small firms under price competition with free entry," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 1(3), pages 167-188, September.
    5. Boone, J., 2004. "Balance of Power," Other publications TiSEM d3f8cd4b-eaf0-4c1c-aed4-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. Benard, Jean, 1987. "Socialist incentive schemes and price planning," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Couverture Orange) 8735, CEPREMAP.
    7. Aslan, Hadiye & Kumar, Praveen, 2016. "The product market effects of hedge fund activism," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 226-248.
    8. Barrett, Sean D., 2004. "Bus Competition in Ireland - The Case for Market Forces," Quarterly Economic Commentary: Special Articles, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), vol. 2004(3-Autumn), pages 1-20.
    9. Milton Madison & James MacDonald & Michael Ollinger, 2000. "Technological Change and Economies of Scale in U.S. Poultry Slaughter," Working Papers 00-05, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    10. Dasgupta Utteeyo, 2011. "Are Entry Threats Always Credible?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-41, December.
    11. Boyan Jovanovic, 1993. "The Diversification of Production," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 24(1 Microec), pages 197-247.
    12. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio & Vannoni, Davide, 2019. "Scale and (quasi) scope economies in airport technology. An application to UK airports," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 150-164.
    13. Maria Lorek, 2013. "Des pôles de croissance vers des systèmes d’innovation territorialisés dans une « nouvelle » économie de marche : le cas de Gdansk, Pologne [The poles of growth and conversion of industrial territo," Working Papers 274, Laboratoire de Recherche sur l'Industrie et l'Innovation. ULCO / Research Unit on Industry and Innovation.
    14. Subhash C. Ray & Shilpa Sethia, 2022. "Nonparametric measurement of potential gains from mergers: an additive decomposition and application to Indian bank mergers," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 115-130, April.
    15. Shi, Guanming & Stiegert, Kyle & Chavas, Jean Paul, 2010. "An Analysis of Pricing in Horizontal and Vertical Markets: The Case of the Cottonseed Market," Working Papers 201439, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Food System Research Group.
    16. Thomaz Teodorovicz & Tainá Leandro & Luiz Alberto Esteves, 2016. "The Evolution Of A Methodology For Relevant Market Definition: An Analysis Of Cade'S Jurisprudence On Private Higher Educational Markets," Anais do XLII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 42nd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 137, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    17. Boyan Jovanovic, 1998. "Michael Gort's Contribution to Economics," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(2), pages 327-337, April.
    18. W. Erwin Diewert & Kevin J. Fox, 2016. "Sunk costs and the measurement of commercial property depreciation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(4), pages 1340-1366, November.
    19. Ghosal, Vivek, 2007. "Small is Beautiful but Size Matters: The Asymmetric Impact of Uncertainty and Sunk Costs on Small and Large Businesses," MPRA Paper 5461, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Boone, Jan, 2004. "Balance of Power," CEPR Discussion Papers 4733, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:23:y:2011:i:1:p:1-24. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CRPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.