Ronald Coase quotes:

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Economics, over the years, has become more and more abstract and divorced from events in the real world. Economists, by and large, do not study the workings of the actual economic system. They theorize about it. As Ely Devons, an English economist, once said in a meeting: 'If economists wanted to study the horse, they wouldn't go around and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, `What would I do if I were a horse?' '

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

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.

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?