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Discussion Paper 2007-3 March 1, 2007

Transaction Cost Economics: An Introduction
Oliver E. Williamson
University of California, Berkeley

Abstract:
This overview of transaction cost economics is organized around the “Carnegie Triple” – be disciplined; be interdisciplinary; have an active mind. The first of these urges those who would open up the black box of economic organization to do so in a modest, slow, molecular, definitive way, with the object of deriving refutable implications and submitting these to empirical testing. The second recommends that the student of economic organization be prepared to cross disciplinary boundaries if and as this is needed to preserve veridical contact with the phenomena. The injunction have an active mind is implemented by being curious and asking the question “What is going on here?” The paper concludes with a discussion of operationalization. JEL: D2, D73, D86, L2

www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers © Author(s) 2007. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License - Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Germany

Transaction Cost Economics: An Introduction Oliver E. Williamson

This overview of transaction cost economics differs from prior overviews to which I have contributed in two respects: it presumes little previous knowledge of the transaction cost economics (hereafter TCE) literature; and it is organized around the “Carnegie Triple” – be disciplined; be interdisciplinary; have an active mind. It is partly autobiographical on that account.1 Section 1 discusses the Carnegie Triple and sets out five key quotations that anchor the transaction cost economics project. Sections 2 through 4 describe how TCE implements each element in the triple. Section 5 discusses operationalization. The conclusions follow in Section 6. 1. 1.1 Introduction The Carnegie Triple It was my privilege

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