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Cited by 2,019

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange

Williamson, Oliver E·1996·The Mechanisms Of Governance

Abstract

Credible commitments and credible threats share the following common attribute: both appear mainly in conjunction with irreversible, specialized investments. But whereas credible commitments are undertaken in support of alliances and to promote exchange, credible threats appear in the context of conflict and rivalry. The former involve reciprocal acts designed to safeguard a relationship, while the latter are unilateral efforts to preempt an advantage. Efforts to support exchange generally operate in the service of efficiency; preemptive investments, by contrast, are commonly antisocial. Both are plainly important to politics and economics, but the study of credible commitments is arguably the more fundamental of the two.

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Metadata

Authors
Williamson, O. E.
Venue
The Mechanisms Of Governance
Published
1996-02-29
Pages
120-144
OpenAlex
W1561704048
Cited by
2,019
References
2
FWCI
485.56
Type
book chapter
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/oso/9780195078244.003.0006
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Williamson, O. E. (1996). Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange. The Mechanisms Of Governance. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195078244.003.0006

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.