In Memoriam: Ronald Coase (1910-2013)

Chicago's memorial notice.  Professor Coase joined the University of Chicago Law School faculty in 1964, and received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991.  He continued to produce scholarly work into his 100s!  In a survey of readers several years ago, Coase ranked 4th (after Holmes, Posner, and Dworkin) among the most influential legal thinkers in American law of the past century.  It was a remarkable act of foresight for the Law School to hire Coase, who did not have a law degree, and to do so long before interdisciplinary scholarship had become the norm at leading law schools.  No doubt many obituaries and memorials will be forthcoming over the next few days; I will try to add links to a few of them.

UPDATE:  The Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics here has a terrific set of links to and about his work.

ANOTHER:  The New York Times obituary.

AND ANOTHER:  Cass Sunstein has a nice explanation of the core ideas of the so-called "Coase Theorem."