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1994 | Buch

Markings on a Long Journey Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Ronald H. Coase

verfasst von: Steven G. Medema

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Buchreihe : Contemporary Economists

Enthalten in: Professional Book Archive

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Über dieses Buch

'Ronald Coase has been one of the most influential economists of his generation. Although his work deals with foundation concepts of the discipline, his ideas have been subject to a variety of usage, often in conjunction with ideological baggage. In this remarkable study of the man and his work, Steven Medema presents a careful, judicious, and nonideological examination of Coase's ideas, challenging their misleading common interpretation and revealing their true revolutionary potential. 'Professor W. J. Samuels, Michigan State University 'Steven Medema's achievement is remarkable: with great fairness he introduces us to Coase's way of thinking, and with great clarity helps us to see the continuity in Coase's work. Medema has written an excellent book about one of the great economists of this century.' Professor T. Eggertsson, University of Iceland and Indiana University. This book presents a systematic analysis of the contributions to economics made by Ronald Coase, the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in economics. Throughout his career, Coase has brought his own particular approach to the economic analysis of the firm, pricing and costs, externalities, the economic role of government and economic method. This book analyses Coase's seminal contributions to economics, as well as the challenge that his work poses to conventional economic analysis.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
1. Markings on a Long Journey
Abstract
His father’s diary records that Ronald Harry Coase was born at 3.25 p.m. on 29 December 1910 in a flat in the London suburb of Willesden. He was the only child of parents who exhibited a strong interest in the sporting life (his father competed in lawn bowling until his death and his mother played tennis well into her later years), but who showed ‘no interest in academic scholarship’ (Coase, 1991, p.1). As one might expect of an only child, Coase reports that he was a loner, a trait later manifested in an academic career where he did little jointly authored work, spent the last half of his career as an economist who worked in a law school, and engaged in research that in many ways made him an outsider within the economics profession.1
Steven G. Medema
2. The Nature of the Firm
Abstract
The’ series of accidents’, described above, that led to the writing of ‘The Nature of the Firm’, culminated in Coase’s being awarded a Cassel travelling scholarship for the academic year 1931–2 as the result of his performance in the final examinations at LSE in 1931. While ‘The Nature of the Firm’ was not published until 1937, Coase says that the ideas for the paper ‘crystallized in my mind sometime in the summer of 1932’ (Coase, 1988b, p.3), after the year spent in the US on the Cassel scholarship studying the vertical and horizontal integration of firms.
Steven G. Medema
3. Pricing, Accounting and Costs
Abstract
Coase has left his mark on economics in that branch of the discipline that we call microeconomics, or price theory. Perhaps the most traditionally micro-theoretic elements of his work are his forays into the areas of pricing and costs. His work on pricing is confined primarily to situations of monopoly,1 and his most enduring impact in this area is his analysis of price regulation under conditions of natural monopoly, where he saw multi-part pricing as the efficient pricing scheme. His contribution here does not lie in his advocacy of multi-part pricing per se (indeed, others had advocated this scheme before Coase) and he does little in the way of developing this idea. Rather, his contribution lies in his systematic exposure of the inefficiencies attending the then dominant idea that marginal cost pricing is the optimal response to situations of natural monopoly. His analysis marks a turning point in the professional perception of the relative merits of the marginal cost and multi-part approaches to natural monopoly price regulation.
Steven G. Medema
4. The Problem of Social Cost
Abstract
If a psychologist were to play a word association game with economists, the most frequent response to the word ‘Coase’ would undoubtedly be ‘the Coase theorem’. The Coase theorem, and the ideas embodied therein, have captured the imagination of economists as have few other ideas. Indeed, Robert Cooter (1987, p.457) has remarked that ‘Anyone who has taught the Coase Theorem to fresh minds has experienced first hand the wonder and admiration which it inspires’. This by itself merits some analysis, and will be discussed below. What is most important here, however, is the development of an entire movement within economics — that of neoclassical law and economics — largely around a single article, Coase’s ‘The Problem of Social Cost’ (1960).1
Steven G. Medema
5. Government and the Market
Abstract
The views of the role of government in the economy are nearly as legion as the number of commentators on this role, and the debate over this role within economics is as old as economics itself.1 Most economists would probably slot Coase on the anti-government end of the spectrum, which is not surprising, given that the Coase theorem, so closely identified with Coase himself, is so widely viewed as implying a highly restricted role for government in the economy.
Steven G. Medema
6. Coase’s View of Economics
Abstract
Ronald Coase was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1991. This award attests to the fact that his work has been widely read, widely cited, and has had enormous influence within the field of economics. Yet, in 1988, Coase writes that ‘My point of view has not in general commanded assent, nor has my argument, for the most part, been understood’ (Coase, 1988e, p. 1). The reason for this, he asserts, is that ‘most economists have a different way of looking at economic problems and do not share my conception of the nature of our subject’ (Coase, 1988e, p.1). This raises two important questions: what is Coase’s view of the nature of economics as commonly practised and what is Coase’s view of how we should do economics?
Steven G. Medema
7. The Place of Ronald Coase in the History of Economic Thought
Abstract
Kenneth Elzinga (1984, p. 572) has said that ‘The truly influential economist is one who affects how economists view fundamental problems in their own discipline and affects how non-specialists come to view the world of economic reality.’ Through his career’s work, and especially through his writing in ‘The Nature of the Firm’ and ‘The Problem of Social Cost’, Coase has had such an influence, and in the process has secured a permanent place in the history of economic thought. While his beginnings as a commerce student with no real background in mathematics did not exactly portend greatness as an economist, the end result, as Cheung (1987, p.455) has described it, was that ‘A seminal mind, fed with what we today would regard as a bare minimum of knowledge, was sufficient to see the world in its own way and to exert profound influence on the profession.’ It is difficult to say, exactly, what Coase’s place ultimately will be in the history of economic thought, since it is only in the last thirty years that his work has drawn a great deal of attention. That Coase innovated, and did so in important ways, is beyond question. It is the subsequent use of those innovations, their application, refinement and extension that await the test of time.
Steven G. Medema
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Ronald H. Coase
verfasst von
Steven G. Medema
Copyright-Jahr
1994
Verlag
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN
978-1-349-12486-2
Print ISBN
978-1-349-12488-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12486-2