Great Economist Ronald Coase has Died

Oldest living Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase died today at the age of 102. Coase was still active in the economics community right up until his death. You can hear an interview of him on NPR here from when he was 101 years young.

Ronald Coase is famous for his ground breaking research on transaction costs. The University of Chicago has posted a great memoriam explaining the significance of his contributions to economics. One paragraph reads:

“Professor Coase’s research on property rights provided the academic underpinning for the establishment of the Acid Rain Program in the United States in the early 1990s, which virtually eliminated acid rain pollution in America,” said Richard Sandor, chairman and chief executive officer of Environmental Financial Products, LLC.

He was also a London School of Economics graduate. Most of the economics blogs I link to on the right will probably have some posts up talking about Coase.