Ronald Coase Quotes

1910–2013 England

Ronald Harry Coase (December 29, 1910 – September 2, 2013) was a British economist and the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School.

England
Academics
Business theorists
Economists
Historians

Also known as: Coase, Ronald, Ronald H. Coase, Ronald Harry Coase

Random Ronald Coase quote

8 quotes

If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess.

How should economists choose? (1981)

In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.

Ronald H. Coase (1988)

A firm consist of the system of relationships which comes into existence when the direction of resources is dependent on an entrepreneur.

The Nature of the Firm (1937)

If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn't go and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, "what would I do if I were a horse?"

American institutionalists were not theoretical but anti-theoretical.... Without a theory they had nothing to pass on except a mass of descriptive material waiting for a theory, or a fire.

Ronald H. Coase (1984)

What I have done is to show the importance for the working of the economic system of what may be termed the institutional structure of production.

The Institutional Structure of Production (1992)

I can't remember [of a good regulation]. Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture—agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal: The effects were bad.

A large part of what we think of as economic activity is designed to accomplish what high transaction costs would otherwise prevent or to reduce transaction costs so that individuals can negotiate freely and we can take advantage of that diffused knowledge of which Friedrich Hayek has told us.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ronald Coase (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.