2010-06-29 11:54

Oliver E. Williamson

Nobel Prize winner Oliver Williamson told an economics forum in Beijing Monday that financial regulators must review their own operations to improve and give confidence to the market.

Williamson, who won a Nobel Prize for economics in 2009, said in his keynote address that lack of appropriate regulation has led to the ongoing global financial crisis. "Regulators tend to fix problems later, rather than rely on appropriate analysis and research to avoid problems," Williamson said. "Financial regulators should look to the past to learn lessons that can be applied to banking institutions."

He also pointed out that some officials work in regulatory commissions, but then later join financial institutions. If a regulator is expecting a future career at a bank, that official might not promote strict regulations, said Williamson, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States.

Williamson told Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong-based Chinese language newspaper, that the reason why financial and banking institutions pay higher salaries to highly skilled employees is to retain them. Without higher salaries, top talents will open their own firms and become rivals. Once rivals lower their service charges, profit margins shrink, affecting the whole sector, he said.

Williamson, 77, told sohu.com that while monopolies should not be over criticized, organizations should share economic benefits with all of society. He also said that social welfare and public benefits should be a larger focus, and added that more competition can introduce more efficiency to offer better social services to the general population.

The economist won a Nobel Prize in economics for analyzing economic governance–the rules by which people exercise authority in companies and economic systems. He was honored along with fellow American Elinor Ostrom, 76, a political scientist at Indiana University. She became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in economics.

Williamson will visit the south China cities of Chengdu and Shenzhen on Friday and Saturday.