The Firm, the Market, and the Law

A Nobel Prize winner's most important, groundbreaking work, collected in one volume

The Firm, the Market, and the Law gathers the most important and lasting works by Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1991 for his groundbreaking work on the significance of transaction costs and property rights, Coase continually urged his fellow economists to examine the real-world foundations on which their theories rest. This volume collects some of his classic articles probing those very foundations. "The Nature of the Firm" (1937) introduced the then-revolutionary concept of transaction costs into economic theory. "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960) further developed this concept, emphasizing the effect of the law on the working of the economic system. The remaining papers and new introductory essay clarify and extend Coarse's arguments and address his critics.