Ronald Coase Quotes

Firms produce goods for households - that's us - and provide us with incomes, and that's even better, because we can spend those incomes on more goods and services. That's called the circular flow of the economy.

When you talk about the economic process of a society, sometimes we separate it into two stories. One is about monetary variables. But then, we very often assume the underlying arrangement, the other variable, is 'perfect competition,' which means people do whatever they are supposed to do.

We use competitive markets to arrange for delivery of our food supply.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

To talk about planning an economic system is to talk in old terms, and I find myself sometimes having to teach Westers about what the market really means.

Money is the great tool through whose means labor and skill become universally co-operative.

In business, real jobs profitably produce goods and services that people value more highly than their alternatives. Subsidizing inefficient jobs is costly, wastes resources, and weakens our economy.

There is no doubt that the recognition by economists of the importance of the role of the firm in the functioning of the economy will prompt them to investigate its activities more closely.

We judge economics by what it can produce. As such, economics is rather more like engineering than physics: more practical than spiritual.

Competition drives growth in the end as opposed to monopolies.

Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers.

Unrestricted laissez faire capitalism allocates resources in a most efficient way to satisfy human wants without regard to the rationality or morality of those desires.

The market is the best garden.

The production of goods had become an end in itself and the consumption of goods only the means to further production.

… capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

Everyone has an interest in the economy: in how it functions, how well it functions, and in whose interests it functions.

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in his view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

If trade were completely free, production would only take place under the most suitable conditions.

… competition has to shoulder the responsibility of explaining all the meaningless ideas of the economists, whereas it should rather be the economists who explain competition.

The better his [a laborer’s] machinery, and the more readily it can be obtained, the larger will be his production....

The object of protection is that of diminishing the distance and the waste between the producer and the consumer

The essential quality of a market system is not that it promotes greed, but that it renders greed harmless.

I think competition always produces better results than a monopoly.

Traditionally in capitalism, when you have more cash, you can fund more activity, which produces more jobs and creates more wealth. That's basic economic theory.

India needs to come out of its socialist pattern of doing things on a rationing basis.