RIP Ronald Coase (1910–2013)

I am late to the commemoration of Ronald Coase’s contribution to economics, on the occasion of his death yesterday at the age of 102 years. You will find a large number of online posts about this with a simple search. The New York Times publishes its obituary here. The Economist points to its article published two years ago on the occasion of Coase’s 100th birthday.

After reading a number of other posts on Coase’s legacy, I decided to offer here this fantastic piece by Kevin Bryan. I heartily recommend a careful reading of it and the links it offers. In the Toolbox for Economic Design there are several cautions against taking the “Coase Theorem” seriously. After studying Bryan’s post and the links he offers in it (especially that to McCloskey’s article), you will have a better idea why this nomenclature (Stigler’s baby, Coase proclaimed no theorems) is wrong and misleading, while Coase’s contributions to institutional economics, stemming from his 1960 article The Problem of Social Cost, are important.

Let us also not forget Coase’s 1937 (!) article The Nature of the Firm, an early and fundamental contribution to the way economists ought to view the limits of the efficacy of markets.