Nureev R.M., Latov Yu.V. Ronald Coase: Man and Theorem

Òåêñò ñòàòüè íà ñàéòå æóðíàëà URL: http://jhist.bgu.ru/reader/article.aspx?id=24730 (äàòà îáðàùåíèÿ 03.01.2022)

Abstract

The article focuses on the ideas and achievements of Ronald Coase, an outstanding economist. The review of his life and scientific achievements, which was timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Nobel Prize in economics being awarded to R. Coase, shows that they contain many paradoxes. Although Coase is known to be the most outstanding economist of the second half of the 20th century, he considered himself an «accidental» economist. Coase's scientific works are extremely few (in fact, only 2 or 3 articles belong to his «great» works). Although he is regarded the founder of neoinstitutionalism, the famous «Coase's theorem» was formulated by J. Stigler, and a systematic presentation of the neoinstitutional theory based on the transaction costs «discovered» by Coase belongs to O. Williamson. In a sense, with his life Coase managed to solve an impossible task that is to achieve maximum results at minimum cost. At the same time, Coase's attitude to institutionalism was ambiguous; both a critical attitude towards the «old» (coming from Veblen and Commons) institutionalism, and a sharp critical attitude to the «economics of the blackboard» typical for this direction can be easily found in his works. The dissemination of Coase's ideas in Russia also looks paradoxical. They were most relevant from a practical point of view in the early 1990s, but a broad creative discussion of his ideas (including the controversy about Coase's theorem) began only in the early 2000s, when the institutions of post-Soviet Russia have already «frozen» and their transformation through the correct application of Cousian ideas has become difficult.