Williamson(1979)transaction-cost economics交易费用经济学-合同关系的治理(中英文).doc

TRANSACTION-COST ECONOMICS: THE GOVERNANCE OF CONTRACTUAL RELATIONS 交易费用经济学：合约关系的治理 The new institutional economics is preoccupied with the origins, incidence, and ramifications of transaction costs. 新制度经济学都已经先研究了交易费用的起源、发生、和分支。Indeed, if transaction costs are negligible, the organization of economic activity is irrelevant, since any advantages one mode of organization appears to hold over another will simply be eliminated by costless contracting. 事实上，如果交易费用是可以忽略的，经济活动的组织就是不相关的，因为一种组织模型对于另一种的优势将仅被低成本的合约所消除。But despite the growing realization that transaction costs are central to the study of economics,1 skeptics remain. 但是怀疑主义说坚持说，尽管日益增长的事实，交易成本仍是经济研究的中心。 Stanley Fischers complaint is typical: Transaction costs have a well-deserved bad name as a theoretical device... [partly] because there is a suspicion that almost anything can be rationalized by invoking suitably specified transaction costs.2 Stanley Fischer的抱怨是典型的：交易成本作为理论设计拥有一个罪有应得的恶名。。这（部分）因为，对于任何东西都可以通过适当引入指定的交易成本而使其合理化这个观点，表示怀疑。Put differently, there are too many degrees of freedom; the concept wants for definition. 换句话说，自由有太多的角度；这个概念需要定义。 Among the factors on which there appears to be developing a general consensus are: 在这些因素里发展了一个普遍一致性是：(1) opportunism is a central concept in the study of transaction costs;3（1）机会主义是交易成本研究的核心概念； (2) opportunism is especially important for economic activity that involves transaction-specific investments in human and physical capital;4（2）机会主义对于经济活动特别重要，包括涉及对人力和物质资本的交易专用性投资；(3) the efficient processing of information is an important and related concept;5 and （3）信息的有效加工过程是一个重要且相关的概念；(4) the assessment of transaction costs is a comparative institutional undertaking.6 （4）交易成本的评估是相对制度上的任务。Beyond these general propositions, a consensus on transaction costs is lacking.除了这些一般的假设，还是缺失交易成本的一致意见。 Further progress in the study of transaction costs awaits the identification of the critical dimensions with respect to which transaction costs differ and an examination of the economizing p