Ronald Coase - Biography

Biography

Ronald Harry Coase was born in Willesden, a suburb of London, on 29 December 1910. His father was a telegraphist for the post office, as was his mother before marriage. As a child, Coase had a weakness in his legs, for which he was required to wear leg-irons. Due to this problem, he attended the school for physical defects. At the age of 12, he was able to enter the Kilburn Grammar School on scholarship. At Kilburn, Coase completed the first year of his B.Comm degree and then passed on to the University of London. Coase married Marion Ruth Hartung of Chicago, Illinois in Willesden, England, August 7, 1937.

Coase attended the London School of Economics, where he received a bachelor of commerce degree in 1932, and was a member of the staff from 1935 to 1951. He then started to work at the University at Buffalo and became an American citizen after moving to the United States in the 1950s. In 1958, he moved to the University of Virginia. Coase settled at the University of Chicago in 1964 and became the editor of the Journal of Law and Economics. He was also for a time a Trustee of the Philadelphia Society. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991.

As his 100th birthday approached, Coase was working on a book concerning the rise of the economies of China and Vietnam. An interview with Coase was conducted by Wang Ning (co-author of the book How China Became Capitalist) December 28–29, 2010, in Chicago. In the interview, Coase explained the mission of the Coase China Society and his vision of economics and the part to be played by Chinese economists. Coase was honored and received an honorary doctorate from the University at Buffalo department of economics in May of 2012.