Econintersect: As a child in England he attended a school for the physically defective because of congential weakness in his legs. The education provided there was not oriented toward “intellectual 
things” (Coase’s words). He managed as a teenager to take some “External Programme” courses at the University of London and from there he gained admission to the London School of Economics to study for a degree in Commerce. This might best be compared to a modern degree in Business Administration. He was on the faculty at the London School of economics from 1935 to 1951. He then came to the U.S. (University of Buffalo, University of Virginia and University of Chicago). Ronald Coase was born 29 December 1910 in Wiillesden (suburban London) and died yesterday 02 September 2013 in Chicago, Illinois.
Coase first gained notice with his 1937 book “The Nature of the Firm” which introduced the concept of transaction costs as a limiting factor in the performance of enterprises, along with other factors such as overhead and inefficiencies in managing great size. In 1960 he published a second seminal work “The Problem of Social Cost” which addressed the concepts of externalities such as costs arising from environmental damage. Both of these works and some additonal papers were published by Coase in a 1990 book “The Firm, The Market and The Law“.
Coase received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1991.
Coase believed that economics has lost its way by trying to become a theoretical discipline. He believed that:
“Economics should be empirical. You should study the system the way it is and describe why it works the way it does.”
Ronald Coase:
“I have never done anything that wasn’t obvious.”
Ronald Coase:
“I never took a course in economics, so I became an economist. I wanted to study history but could not qualify because I had not studied Latin. So I took my degree in Commerce.”
Coase published his last book last year at age 101 “How China Became Capitalist“. The following is a short video covering a discussion between Coase and co-author Ning Wang.
Empiricists love the Coase quote made in a lecture at the University of Virginia in the 1960s:
“If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess.”
Sources:
- Ronald Coase, Nobel Winner Who Studied Corporations, Dies at 102 (Laurence Arnold, Bloomberg, 02 September 2013)
- Ronald Coase (Wikipedia)
