Can we consider Ronald Coase as an economic historian? Most economists or social scientists that read this blog must appreciate Coase largely for his Nature of the Firm and the Problem of Social Cost. Personally, while I appreciate these works for their theoretical insights (well, isn’t that an understatement!), I appreciate Coase much more for articles that very few know about.
Generally, after these two articles, most economists do not know what Coase wrote about. Some might know about Coase’s proviso regarding durability and monopoly (a single firm producing a durable good cannot be a monopoly because it competes with its future self) or about his work on the Federal Communications Commission (which is an application of his two main papers).
Fewer people know about his piece about the lighthouse in economics. While it is not an unknown piece, it is mostly known within the subfield of public economics…
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