Coase Quotes & Sayings

Changes like the telephone and telegraphy, which tend to reduce the cost of organizing spatially, will tend to increase the size of the firm. — Ronald Coase

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 — Ronald Coase

Economics as currently presented in textbooks and taught in the classroom does not have much to do with business management, and still less with entrepreneurship. — Ronald Coase

Technology is at a point where we should allow multiple parties to occupy the same spectral space. — Ronald Coase

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. — Ronald Coase

I've been wrong so often, I don't find it extraordinary at all. — Ronald Coase

But a theory is not like an airline or bus timetable. We are not interested simply in the accuracy of its predictions. A theory also serves as a base for thinking. It helps us to understand what is going on by enabling us to organize our thoughts. Faced with a choice between a theory which predicts well but gives us little insight into how the system works and one which gives us this insight but predicts badly, I would choose the latter, and I am inclined to think that most economists would do the same. — Ronald H. Coase

You wouldn't think there was a need for a Coase Theorem, really. — Ronald Coase

In 1951, the Columbia University sociologist C. Wright Mills published a study titled White Collar: The American Middle Classes.26 Like Ronald Coase, Mills was fascinated by the rise of large managerial corporations. He argued that these firms, in their pursuit of scale and efficiency, had created a vast tier of workers who carried out repetitive, mechanistic tasks that stifled their imagination and, ultimately, their ability to fully participate in society. In short, Mills argued, the typical corporate worker was alienated. For many, that alienation was captured in the warning printed on the Hollerith punch cards that, thanks to IBM and other data processing firms, became ubiquitous symbols and agents of bureaucratized life during the 1950s and 1960s: "Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate. — Moises Naim

A firm consist of the system of relationships which comes into existence when the direction of resources is dependent on an entrepreneur ... As a firm gets larger, there may be decreasing returns to the entrepreneur function, that is, the costs of organizing additional transactions within the firm may rise. — Ronald Coase

If you torture the data long enough, it will confess. — Ronald Coase

In my long life, I have known some great economists, but I have never counted myself among their number nor walked in their company. — Ronald Coase

The main reason why it is profitable to establish a firm would seem to be that there is a cost of using the price mechanism. The most obvious cost of 'organizing' production through the price mechanism is that of discovering what the relevant prices are. — Ronald Coase

Data can't speak for itself; it's up to you to give it a voice. Try to speak truthfully. — Ronald Coase

The tools used by economists to analyze business firms are too abstract and speculative to offer any guidance to entrepreneurs and managers in their constant struggle to bring novel products to consumers at low cost. — Ronald Coase

Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world. — Ronald Coase

During the two centuries since the publication of 'The Wealth of Nations,' the main activity of economists, it seems to me, has been to fill the gaps in Adam Smith's system, to correct his errors and to make his analysis vastly more exact. — Ronald Coase

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. — Oliver E. Williamson

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

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

Outside the firm, price movements direct production, which is co-ordinated through a series of exchange transactions on the market. Within a firm, these market transactions are eliminated and in place of the complicated market structure with exchange transactions is substituted the entrepreneur-co-ordinator, who directs production. — Ronald Coase

We must first note that economic factors are taken into account in a world in which ignorance, prejudice, and mental confusion, encouraged rather than dispelled by the political organization, exert a strong influence on policy making. — Ronald Coase

The pollution problem is always seen as someone who was doing something bad that has to be stopped. To me, pollution is doing something bad and good. People don't pollute because they like polluting. They do it because it's a cheaper way of producing something else. — Ronald Coase

Despite all the efforts of art dealers, the number of Rembrandts existing at a given time is limited; yet such paintings are commonly disposed of by auction. — Ronald Coase

I hate when people ask me to: "Massage the data". — Ronald Coase

You get more irrationality within the family and in consumer behavior than you get, say, in the behavior of firms in their purchases. — Ronald Coase

People have used my views for purposes which are very different from mine. — Ronald Coase

It is clear that these are alternative methods of co-ordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization? — Ronald Coase

You should not forget that without all the work in law and economics, a great part of which has been supported by the John M. Olin Foundation, it is doubtful whether the importance of my work would have been recognized. — Ronald Coase

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 Coase

Roughly speaking, when you are dealing with business firms operating in a competitive system, you can assume that they're going to act rationally. Why? Because someone in a firm who buys things at $10 and sells them for $8.00 isn't going to last very long in that firm. — Ronald Coase

The law of property determines who owns something, but the market determines how it will be used. — Ronald Coase

In fact, 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. — Ronald Coase

Ronnie had it right calling it Torture. That is a much more accurate description the way I see it. — Ronald Coase

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. — Ronald Coase

And that's the real reason the powerful fear open systems and networks. If anyone can set up a free voicecall to anyone else in the world, using the net, then we can all communicate with the same ease that's standard for the high and mighty. [ ... ]
And if any worker, anywhere, can communicate with any other worker, anywhere, for free, instantaneously, without the boss's permission, then, brother, look out, because the Coase cost of demanding better pay, better working conditions and a slice of the pie just got a *lot* cheaper. And the people who have the power aren't going to sit still and let a bunch of grunts take it away from them. — Cory Doctorow

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. — Eric Maskin