Ronald Coase
Ronald Coase was born in a suburb of London in 1910. His parents worked together at the post office and he had a humble background. He had physical disabilities that required him to attend a special school as a young child, but none of this held him back. He ended up attending the University of London and the London School of Economics, all which led to his ultimate achievement - The Noble Prize.
I had never heard of Ronald Coase before I was assigned his name as an alias, but quickly into my researched I learned how important his work was. His two main works, "The Nature of the Firm" and "The Problem of Social Cost", made a lot of contributions to ideas of transaction costs among other economics concepts. He spent many decades of his life teaching economics and every year the University of Chicago honors him by hosting the Coase Lecture.
Ronald Coase's ideas affected how many people viewed ideas in economics and many people consider him one of the great economists. In 1991 he received The Noble Prize, the most prestigious award an economist could receive. He passed away in September of 2013, but he will not be forgotten anytime soon as he lives on in the books and ideas of economics.
Photo: www.newyorker.com
Sources: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Coase.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/03/ronald-coase-is-dead-here-are-five-of-his-papers-you-need-to-read/
https://www.coase.org/aboutronaldcoase.htm
Coase can be considered the founding father of our subject. The Nature of the Firm is what launched this inquiry. He is also one of the founders of the field known as Law and Economics. His faculty position at the University of Chicago was in the Law School not the Economics Department. (Though he likely had a courtesy appointment in the latter.)
ReplyDelete