Coase << kohs >>, Ronald Harry (1910-2013), a British-born American economist, developed theories on the law of property rights and business transactions and on the ways these laws affect society. His theories concern the effects of the legal framework on property rights and the way in which this framework determines how economic decisions are made. In 1991, Coase was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics. He was the first law professor to be awarded the prize.
Ronald Harry Coase was born on Dec. 29, 1910, in London. He earned a doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics. Coase taught at several British universities. In 1951, he moved to the United States, where he was appointed lecturer at the University of Buffalo in New York (now the State University of New York at Buffalo). Later in the 1950’s, he became a U.S. citizen. From 1958 to 1964, he taught at the University of Virginia. In 1961, he wrote one of the most widely cited articles in modern economic literature, “The Problem of Social Cost,” in which he discussed property rights. His article questioned the assumption that behavior damaging to others should be prohibited. Coase’s work stressed the importance of an efficient market and of negotiation (bargaining) over litigation (taking legal action). Coase moved to the University of Chicago in 1964, where he became professor of economics and was editor of the Journal of Law and Economics until 1982. He became an emeritus professor in 1982. Coase died on Sept. 2, 2013, at the age of 102.
