Oliver E. Williamson (born September 27, 1932) is a prominent author in the area of transaction cost economics, a student of Ronald Coase and Herbert Simon.
Williamson received his Bachelor of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955, M.B.A. from Stanford University in 1960, and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1963.
His focus on the costs of transactions have led Williamson to distinguish between repeated case-by-case bargaining on the one hand and relationship-specific contracts on the other.