Williamson, Ostrom Win

Well, the Nobel brand isn't worth what it once was, especially given the Peace prize, but it's still all harmless fun. Oliver Williamson wrote a bunch of interesting stuff about the value of the firm--Ronald Coase stuff--and transaction costs. For instance, he highlights the 'own' rate of interest for owning commodities because it allows one to avoid transaction costs delivering the underlying commodity. This has relevance to the contango and normal backwardization of futures contracts.

He reads a lot like Frank Knight to me, with a strong respect for markets, and not highly mathematical. Yet, like Knight, it's hard to develop models based on his work, which makes him a surprising result. An idea that generates a model, no matter how abstract, seems the economic ideal. I think Williamson's work is very good for undergraduates, so hopefully this will get him read more.

I honestly have never heard of Elinor Ostrom before.

Update: I seemed to have confused Jeffrey Williams with Oliver Williamson. The former wrote on contango and futures. This work was consistent with Williamson's work, and I remember relating some ideas directly, but to my knowledge Williamson never applied his work to futures directly.