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Ronald Harry Coase (29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. He was the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. 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, 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" (1937), which introduces the concept of transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms, and "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960), which suggests that well-defined property rights could overcome the problems of externalities (see Coase theorem). Coase is also often referred to as the "father" of reform in the policy for allocation of the electromagnetic spectrum, based on his article "The Federal Communications Commission" (1959), where he criticises spectrum licensing, suggesting property rights as a more efficient method of allocating spectrum to users. Additionally, Coase's transaction costs approach is currently influential in modern organizational economics, where it was reintroduced by Oliver E. Williamson.


Biography

Ronald Harry Coase was born in Willesden, a suburb of London, on 29 December 1910. His father was a telegraphist for the post office, as was his mother before marriage. As a child, Coase had a weakness in his legs, for which he was required to wear leg-irons. Due to this problem, he attended the school for physical defectives. At the age of 12, he was able to enter the Kilburn Grammar School on scholarship. At Kilburn, Coase completed the first year of his BComm degree and then passed on to the University of London. Coase married Marion Ruth Hartung of Chicago, Illinois in Willesden, England, 7 August 1937.

Coase attended the London School of Economics, where he received a bachelor of commerce degree in 1932. Between 1934–1935 Coase was an assistant lecturer in commerce at the University of Liverpool before returning to London School of Economics as a member of staff until 1951. He then started to work at the University at Buffalo and retained his British citizenship after moving to the United States in the 1950s. In 1958, he moved to the University of Virginia. Coase settled at the University of Chicago in 1964 and became the editor of the Journal of Law and Economics. He was also for a time a trustee of the Philadelphia Society. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991.

Nearing his 100th birthday, Coase was working on a book concerning the rise of the economies of China and Vietnam. An interview with Coase was conducted by Wang Ning (co-author of the book How China Became Capitalist) 28–29 December 2010, in Chicago. In the interview, Coase explained the mission of the Coase China Society and his vision of economics and the part to be played by Chinese economists. Coase was honoured and received an honorary doctorate from the University at Buffalo Department of Economics in May 2012.

Coase died in Chicago on 2 September 2013. His wife had died on October 17, 2012. He was praised across the political spectrum, with Slate Magazine calling him "one of the most distinguished economists in the world" and Forbes Magazine calling him "the greatest of the many great University of Chicago economists". The Washington Post called his work over eight decades "impossible to summarize" while recommending five of his papers to read.