By Khalida Sarwari
An economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences today.
Oliver Williamson, 77, the Edgar F. Kaiser professor emeritus of business, economics, and law at the university, shares the prize with Elinor Ostrom, political science and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University.
Williamson was honored for his analysis of economic governance and for developing a theory in which business firms serve as structures for conflict resolution, according to the of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Economic Sciences Prize Committee.
The committee noted that “over the last three decades these seminal contributions have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention.”
The prize marks the fifth Nobel in economics for the university and the 21st overall in fields including physics, chemistry and literature.
“We congratulate Oliver on this well-deserved honor for his groundbreaking work in economics,” Chancellor Robert Birgeneau said in a statement. “He takes his place as the fifth Berkeley economics professor to win the Nobel Prize and further continues the remarkable contributions UC Berkeley has made to this field.”
Williamson is the author of the economics classic “Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications,” and its sequel, “The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting.”
His favorite activities include fly-fishing and welded-metal sculpting. He is married and has five children.