The Mechanisms of Governance

Oliver E. Williamson is the Edgar F. Kaiser Professor of Business, Professor of Economics, and Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of numerous works in which law, economics, and organization are joined.

• Prologue ; PART I: OVERVIEW ; 2. Chester Barnard and the Incipient Science of Organization ; 3. Transaction Cost Economics ; PART II: CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS ; 4. Comparative Economic Organization: The Analysis of Discrete Strucutural Alternatives ; 5. Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange ; 6. Economic Institutions: Spontaneous and Intentional Governance ; 7. Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance ; 8. The Politics and Economics of Redistribution and Inefficiency ; PART III: ORGANIZATIONS ; 9. Transaction Cost Economics and Organization Theory ; 10. Calculativeness, Trust, and Economic Organization ; PART IV: PUBLIC POLICY ; 11. Delimiting Antitrust ; 12. Strategizing, Economizing, and Economic Organization ; 13. The Institutions and Governance of Economic Development and Reform ; PART V: CONTROVERSY AND PERSPECTIVES ; 14. Transaction Cost Economics Meets Posnerian Law and Economics ; 15. Transaction Cost Economics and the Evolving Science of Organization ; Glossary

These papers have been slightly modified and linking passages have been added to them to impose a sort of unity on them. The book is therefore an extremely convenient collection on the overall theory and some of the applications of transaction cost economics as understood by the leading exponent of those economics ... it is on the understanding of the existence of the firm and its behaviour that he has made his greatest mark ... I believe that what is read will speak for itself and for good law and economics more eloquently than I can manage here.