Ronald Coase Quotes

• If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

  Ronald Coase

  Truth, Knowledge, Data

  "A Comment on Daniel Klein's 'A Plea to Economists Who Favor Liberty'" by Gordon Tullock, Eastern Economic Journal, 2001.

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• Data can't speak for itself; it's up to you to give it a voice. Try to speak truthfully.

  Ronald Coase

  Data, Voice, Giving

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• I can't remember one [example of regulation] that's good. Regulation of transport, regulation of agriculture - agriculture is a, zoning is z. You know, you go from a to z, they are all bad. There were so many studies, and the result was quite universal: The effects were bad.

  Ronald Coase

  Agriculture, Regulation, Study

  "Looking for Results". Interview with Thomas Winslow Hazlett, reason.com. January 1997.

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• Economics, over the years, has become more and more abstract and divorced from events in the real world. Economists, by and large, do not study the workings of the actual economic system. They theorize about it. As Ely Devons, an English economist, once said in a meeting: 'If economists wanted to study the horse, they wouldn't go around and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, `What would I do if I were a horse?' '

  Ronald Coase

  Horse, Real, Years

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• Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.

  Ronald Coase

  Real, Air, World

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• If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, "what would I do if I were a horse?"

  Ronald Coase

  Horse, Looks, Study

  Ronald Coase's speech to the "International Society of New Institutional Economics" in Washington, D.C., September 17, 1999.

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• We must first note that economic factors are taken into account in a world in which ignorance, prejudice, and mental confusion, encouraged rather than dispelled by the political organization, exert a strong influence on policy making.

  Ronald Coase

  Strong, Taken, Ignorance

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• A firm, therefore, consists of the system of relationships which comes into existence when the direction of resources is dependent on an entrepreneur... As a firm gets larger, there may be decreasing returns to the entrepreneur function, that is, the costs of organising additional transactions within the firm may rise.

  Ronald Coase

  Entrepreneur, Cost, May

  "The nature of the firm" by Ronald Coase in Economica, Volume 4, No. 16 (p. 393), onlinelibrary.wiley.com. November 1937.

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• In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.

  Ronald Coase

  Silly, May, Youth

  "The Firm, the Market, and the Law (Note on the problem of social costs)". Book by Ronald Coase (p. 185), 1988.

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• Outside the firm, price movements direct production, which is co-ordinated through a series of exchange transactions on the market. Within a firm, these market transactions are eliminated and in place of the complicated market structure with exchange transactions is substituted the entrepreneur-co-ordinator, who directs production.

  Ronald Coase

  Entrepreneur, Movement, Complicated

  "The nature of the firm" by Ronald Coase in Economica, Volume 4, No. 16 (p. 388), onlinelibrary.wiley.com. November 1937.

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• In fact, a large part of what we think of as economic activity is designed to accomplish what high transaction costs would otherwise prevent or to reduce transaction costs so that individuals can negotiate freely and we can take advantage of that diffused knowledge of which Friedrich Hayek has told us.

  Ronald Coase

  Thinking, Cost, Facts

  "The Institutional Structure of Production". Ronald Coase's Nobel Memorial Prize Lecture published in Ronald Coase "Essays on Economics and Economists" (p. 9), May 2, 1994.

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• I hate when people ask me to: "Massage the data".

  Ronald Coase

  Hate, Data, People

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• It is clear that these are alternative methods of co-ordinating production. Yet, having regard to the fact that, if production is regulated by price movements, production could be carried on without any organization at all might we ask, why is there any organization?

  Ronald Coase

  Organization, Alternatives, Movement

  "The Nature of the Firm". Book by Ronald Coase (p. 388), 1937.

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• Ronnie had it right calling it Torture. That is a much more accurate description the way I see it.

  Ronald Coase

  Calling, Way, Description

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