Ronald Coase

Who was Ronald Coase?

Ronald Harry Coase was a British economist and author. He was for much of his life the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School, but was famed for his work done at the University of Virginia. After studying with the University of London External Programme in 1927–29, Coase entered the London School of Economics, where he took courses with Arnold Plant. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991.

Coase, who believed economists should study real markets and not theoretical ones, established the case for the corporation as a means to pay the costs of operating a marketplace. Coase is best known for two articles in particular: "The Nature of the Firm", which introduces the concept of transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms, and "The Problem of Social Cost", which suggests that well-defined property rights could overcome the problems of externalities.