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© 1995 Oxford University Press

research-article

Hierarchies, Markets and Power in the Economy : An Economic Perspective

OLIVER E. WILLIAMSON*

(University of California Berkeley, California, USA)
*The author is Edgar F. Kaiser Professor of Business, Professor of Economics, and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Abstract

This paper adopts the transaction cost economics perspective for purposes of examining hierarchies, markets, and power in the economy. Transaction cost economics works out of an economizing perspective in which markets and hierarchies are alternative modes of governance and the object is to ascertain which transactions go where and why. The role of power in this setup is strictly limited—partly because power tends to be myopic (transactions are not examined ‘in their entirety’) and partly because it is tautological. Power needs to be optrationalized, whereupon the refutable implications that accrue to this perspective can be derived.


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