Friday, September 6, 2013

Professor Ronald Coase, passed away at 102

Dr.Ronald Coase, was perhaps the only economics professor who lived such a long years upto 102 rather its more than a 101 economics. He passed away on September 2, 2013. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in the year 1991 for his work on "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy".

I am a long admirer of his work on property rights. Prof Coase was also admirer of Prof F A Hayek's idea of choices in currencies and against of monopoly legal tender. 

Read this paper titled "Other things equal: the so called coase theorem".

His very opening line of his Nobel lecture was very candid. He begun by saying:

  • "In my long life I have known some great economists but I have never counted myself among their number nor walked in their company. I have made no innovations in high theory. My contribution to economics has been to urge the inclusion in our analysis of features of the economic system so obvious that,..."

"in a 60-year career he wrote only about a dozen significant papers and used little or no mathematics, yet his impact on his discipline was profound."

Here are some obituaries links:

The life and legacy of Ronald Coase
Ronald Coase : 1910 – 2013
RONALD COASE AND THE MISUSE OF ECONOMICS

Nobelist Who Studied Corporations
Remembering Ronald Coase
Ronald Coase has died, but his individualist dogma is everywhere

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