Ronald Coase is a economist Britannique born the December 29th 1910 with Willesden. Regarded as the founding father of the theory of the costs of transaction (subbranch of the Nouvelle institutional economy) and prize winner of the Nobel Prize of economy in 1991, it belongs to the economists who gave birth to the economy from the institutions and the theorists of the economic Analyze of the right referent often to these writings as for creation of this current.

Biography

Studying with the London School off Economics where it met Lionel Robbins and Arnold Plant, he was professor a time in his native land then at the American universities of Buffalo, Michigan and finally Chicago in 1964 of which he will not move thereafter any more. Professor with the Faculty of Law of this university, he was the editor association of the Journal off Law and Economics as of his arrival after the departure of Aaron Director.

Costs of transaction

See also: Cost of transaction

In its famous article natural The off the firm (1937), Coase attempts to answer the following question: Why emergent in the ocean of the unconscious co-operation of the small islands of conscious capacity? In other words, why do there exist companies?

According to Coase, the recourse to the neo-classic system of the prices has a cost (calling into question the neo-classic assumption of perfect Information), and this cost explains the formation of collective structures like the companies or the administrations, which contribute to the reduction of these costs of transaction.

The typical examples of the Cost of transaction, forgotten a long time by the economic theory, are the costs of prospection in order to gather a maximum of prices available on the Marché, the time necessary with the meeting of the potential customers and the drafting of the optimal contract then its revision once arrived in its term… The merit of Coase was to stress these various obstacles at the ideal use of the System the pricings.

The posterity of the analysis in term of costs of transaction was the advent of the current neoinstitutionnalist in economy with like figurehead Steven Cheung or Oliver Williamson…

Theorem of Coase

See also: Theorem of Coase

There exists a great number of theorems of Coase and each economist has his version of the theorem. However, the version resulting from Chicago of the years 1960 implies that, whatever the initial attribution of the property rights between the participants in the markets, a system of general stability will lead ex post to the optimal allowance of the resources.

Other versions also pose that in the absence of costs of transaction and with a clear distribution of the property rights, the negotiation between the agents leads to an effective allowance of the resources.

The goal of this demonstration was primarily to show that the bad definition of property rights was at the origin of inefficiencies, to which one tried to cure by an expensive regulatory work. This result is conceptually identical to the assumption of a complete Système of markets necessary for the theorems of the wellbeing and the Théorie of general stability of Arrow and Debreu.

Often seen as a weapon of the economy liberal policy against the contemporary legal systems and any form of official regulation, it was as used by holding of interventionism on the reasons as, if the initial distribution of the rights imports little, then the State has a great role to play to limit the inequalities ex handle .

This theorem was at the base of the emergence of the economic Analyze of the right which abounded since under the impulse with theorists like Guido Calabresi and Richard Posner.

Selective bibliography

• 1937, " Natural The off the firm" , Economica, 4,386-405. (in line version)

• 1946, " Marginal The Cost Controversy" , Economica, 13, p.169
• 1960, " The Problem off Social Cost" , Newspaper off Law and Economics, 3 (1), 1-44. (online version)
• 1972, " Durability and Monopoly" , Newspaper off Law and Economics, 15, p.143
• 1974, " The Lighthouse in Economics" , Newspaper off Law and Economics, 17, p.357
• 1975, " Marshall one Method" , Newspaper off Law and Economics, 18, p.25
• 1978, " Economics and Contiguous Disciplines", Newspaper off Legal Studies, 7, p.201
• 1984, " The New Institutional Economics", Newspaper off Institutional and Theoretical Economics,
• 1988, The Firm, the Market and the Law , 1988.
• 1992, " The Institutional Structure off Production" , 1992, AER. (Short speech for the Nobel Prize) (online version)
• 1993, " Law and Economics At Chicago" Newspaper off Law and Economics, 36, p.239

French texts available

• "The nature of the firme" , Re-examined French of Economy , vol. II/1, 1987, pp.133-163. (First translation in French of: " Natural The off the firm" )

• the Company, the market and the right , Editions of organization, 2005. (Translation of The Firm, the Market and the Law ,)

This collection of articles includes/understands the translations, inter alia, of: " Natural The off the firm" ; " Marginal The Cost Controversy" ; " The Problem off Social Cost" ; " The Lighthouse in Economics" . The contents and the first chapter (pp.17-50), which gives its title to volume, are available on line on the site of the editor: contents; chapter 1: " The company, the market and the droit".

References

• Coriat B., Weinstein O. (1995), new theories of the company , the Book of Pocket

• Cards on the prizes winner of the Price of the Bank of Sweden in economic scenes in memory of Alfred Nobel carried out by economic Problems , French Documentation.

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