 |
| Ronald Coase |
Ronald Coase - the University of Chicago law professor who was not a lawyer - has died at age 102.
In his groundbreaking paper, “The Problem of Social Cost,” published in 1960, Professor Coase challenged the idea that the only way to restrain people and companies from behaving in ways that harmed others was through government intervention. He argued that if there were no transaction costs, the affected parties could negotiate and settle conflicts privately to their mutual benefit, and that fostering such settlements might make more economic sense than pre-empting them with regulations.
The paper made the idea of property rights fundamental to understanding the role of regulation in the economy. It grew out of a study by Professor Coase on how the Federal Communications Commission licensed broadcasters.
The practice of issuing the licenses more or less permanently for small fees to whoever applied first and met legal requirements made little economic sense, he argued; better to treat them as property, auction them off and allow them to be freely transferred. Decades later, his ideas were used to raise billions of dollars for the Treasury when radio frequencies were assigned for cellular phone services.
No comments:
Post a Comment