Ronald Coase Quotes

I tend to regard the Coase theorem as a stepping stone on the way to an analysis of an economy with positive transaction costs.

I'm no enthusiast for the Coase Theorem. I don't like it, but it's widely used.

Textbooks describe economics as the study of the allocation of scarce resources. That definition may be the 'what,' but it certainly is not the 'why.'

I think I have met nearly all the Laureates in Economics. Among the few I haven't met, I suppose I'd most like to meet Ronald Coase because of his legendary power to persuade his colleagues of the validity of the Coase Theorem.

Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.

The lens of contract focuses predominantly on gains from trade whereas orthodoxy is focused on resource allocation.

Ronald Coase, in his classic 1937 paper on 'The Nature of the Firm,' was the first to bring the concept of transaction costs to bear on the study of firm and market organization.

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.

Economics is not about goods and services; it is about human choice and action.

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.

My citizen activism is a direct outgrowth of a classical and fiscally conservative training in economics at Harvard. It is a perspective rooted in one of the most important concepts in economics - the need for government intervention in the presence of a market failure.

To start with, anybody who would like the world to be a better place should be able to think like an economist.

The free lunch has still to be invented.

Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.

When people don’t pay the true cost of something, they tend to consume it inefficiently.

I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.

What is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits of the labor of the underclass

In a world of private property, if something isn't owned by somebody, it's going to be misused by somebody else.

Economics is a very difficult subject. I've compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running.

Microeconomics is about money you don't have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

Perhaps the most widespread misunderstanding of economics is that it applies solely to financial transactions. Frequently this leads to statements that "there are noneconomic values" to consider. There are, of course, noneconomic values. Indeed, there are only noneconomic values. Economics is not a value itself but merely a method of trading off one value against another.

I'm not currently into economic textbooks, but my grandchildren tell me that the book by Gregory Mankiw, former head of the white house council of economic advisers is a model of intelligence and clarity. Why not try that one.

The concept of profit maximization is, in fact, meaningless.