Superior native wins Nobel Prize

• Oliver Williamson

Courtesy of the University of California, Berkeley

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A Superior native is one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Oliver E. Williamson, a professor emeritus of business, economics and law at the University of California in Berkeley, shares the prize with Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.

Williamson, who was born in Superior in 1932 and graduated from the former Central High School was honored “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm,” according to the Nobel Prize Web site.

Williamson’s work involves a multi-disciplinary field that he mapped out to study how varying organizational structures for markets and institutions affect economic activity. It is said to have influenced everything from electricity deregulation in California to investment in Eastern Europe to human resource management in the technology industry, according to a news release issued by the University of California in Berkley.

The Edgar F. Kaiser professor emeritus of business, economics and law at the Haas School of Business, and a professor of economics in UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science, Williamson is the author of several books, including an economics classic: “Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications” (1975), and 10 years later, “The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting.” The latter is said to be the most frequently cited work in social science research.

Williamson, who grew up in Superior and spent summers at the family cottage in Lake Nebagamon, continues to come back to the region in the summer months, a friend in Lake Nebagamon said.

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