When and where was Ronald Coase born?
Ronald Harry Coase was born in Willesden, a suburb of London, on the 29th of December 1910. His father worked as a telegraphist for the post office, and his mother held the same job before marriage.
Ronald Harry Coase was born in Willesden, a suburb of London, on the 29th of December 1910. His father worked as a telegraphist for the post office, and his mother held the same job before marriage.
Ronald Coase published The Nature of the Firm in 1937 to explain why business firms exist when production could theoretically be carried out without any organization. He argued that firms emerge to internalize transaction costs such as search expenses, information gathering, bargaining time, keeping trade secrets, and policing enforcement.
Ronald Coase viewed law and economics as having two distinct parts: using economic concepts to analyze the legal system and studying how the legal system influenced the working of the economic system. He stated he felt most interested in the second part and edited the Journal of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago starting in 1964.
Ronald Coase received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991 for his work on transaction costs and property rights. His research demonstrated that with sufficient transaction costs, initial property rights matter for both equity and efficiency, forming the basis of the famous Coase theorem labeled by George Stigler.
Ronald Coase died in Chicago on the 2nd of September 2013 at age 102. Both he and his wife Marian Ruth Hartung are buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago after being married seventy-five years until her death on the 17th of October 2012.