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Thanks a lot, Dr. Nie; your comments are helpful. You addressed my question from the perspective of the classification of institutions. Yes, a commonly held view on the nature of institutions is that proposed by North, who defines institutions as the rule of the game governing the interactions of the individuals involved. By this definition, we can classify institutions into macro-level, intermediate-level, and micro-level categories. Laws and legislation belong to the macro-level, and organizations like firm are about the intermediate-level, while the individual contracts should be the third. But, Williamson's governance structure of organizations cannot be classified into the second level, since governance structure is not about rules, or not at least aimed at rules. The main reason why Williamson investigates governance structure is, I believe, that he intends to address this from transaction cost perspectives. Different governance structures are differing in transaction costs due to the difference in their ability to predict and enforce the contracts. So, Williamson works in the tradition of transaction and contract theories. As you mentioned, your postdoctoral advisor, Prof. Hart, also claims him to an institutionalist. But, the problem emerging here is, there are inconsistencies here in the research program of institutions. This tradition is open to economics, management, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, it is too broad to be of value. It cannot establish itself a system that is constructed on a unified notion of institutions. It is fragmented. This is a serious challenge to the New Institutional Economic school. What do you think? Or what does prof. Hart think? Thanks again for your response. I hope our talks go on from here. The reason I am writing English is the consideration that you are doing postdoctoral research at Harvard with the language of English. This way can facilitate your thinking as well as discussing the issue with the professors there.
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