Brian Doherty on the Late Ronald Coase

Ronald Coase, winner of the 1991 Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economics, died in September at age 102. Without math,
Coase provided unusually fruitful insights that shaped the
economics profession, producing two papers that remain among the
most cited in the literature. The first was his 1937 article, “The
Nature of the Firm,” which, as Hazlett explained, outlined “the
subtle logic of how firms pursue efficiency in a complicated
world.” The second was the 1960 essay “The Problem of Social Cost.”
That article looked at how market actions affected third parties.
Reason senior editor Brian Doherty writes that Coase’s reach
covered everything from the air we breathe to the airwaves through
which we communicate-an impressive feat for an economist who
disdained math.

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