The Early Life of Ronald Harold Coase

Abstract

There are few Nobel Memorial Prize winners in finance or economics who are as unique in personality and academic character as Ronald Harold Coase (pronounced like “rose” or “chose”). Nor have there been many with as unassuming an upbringing, or as simple, but profound, a contribution to the literature. A single paper early in his career, entitled “The Nature of the Firm,” and another much later, have had a profound influence on our financial intuition. They have transformed how we think about our disciplines in ways as fundamental as the concept of free markets espoused by Adam Smith in 1776, or the not unrelated intuition of efficient markets, espoused first by John Burr Williams, and, three decades later, by Eugene Fama. In between these two dates, an unassuming individual of most modest means made a simple statement that revolutionized how we think both about organizations and also about property.