According to the announcement of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, ronald harry coase's main academic contribution to winning the Nobel Prize in Economics in 199 1 was to reveal the importance of "transaction value" in the property right and function of economic organization structure. His outstanding contribution is to discover and clarify the importance of transaction cost and property right in economic organization and institutional structure and their roles in economic activities.

Two famous papers

1937, The Nature of Enterprises (1937), explains the scale of enterprises with the concept of transaction costs. This paper discusses the reasons for the existence of industrial enterprises and the boundary of their expansion scale in a unique way, and Coase has created an important category of "transaction cost" to explain it.

Social Cost (1960), published in 1960, thinks that perfecting the definition of property rights can solve the externality problem. This paper re-studies the characteristics of contractual behavior when the transaction cost is zero, criticizes Pigou's compensation principle (government intervention) on the issue of "externalities", and demonstrates that market transactions are equally effective even if social costs (that is, externalities) appear on the premise of clear property rights.

Coase's transaction cost theory was introduced into modern organization theory by oliver williamson, which had a great influence.

Coase is also known as the father of frequency policy reform, because he criticized the frequency licensing system in the article "Federal Communications Commission (1959)" and proposed that property right is a more efficient frequency allocation scheme.

Other works

Journal of Lighthouse Law and Economics in Economics 17, No.2 (10/974): 357-76.

Journal of Law and Economics of the Federal Communications Commission 2( 10/959):1-40.

American broadcasting industry: monopoly research results in radio and television. Economics (1October 1950)