Ronald Coase's Life's Work: The Real World Exists

“It was a strange meeting,” said Ronald Coase, “in which everyone thought I was wrong at the beginning, and they thought I was right at the end.” On the phone in 2011, he was speaking of a dinner in 1959, during which he changed the minds of 20 Chicago economists, among them George Stigler and Milton Friedman. Before the dinner, economists believed that electromagnetic spectrum had to be apportioned by the government, to prevent interference. After the dinner, at least 21 economists believed in a property right to spectrum, which could be sold like real estate. It’s the kind of radical idea that, given 34 years, can win you a Nobel Prize.

Coase died yesterday, at the age of 102. His 1959 paper, “The Federal Communications Commission,” is still a good read. It’s slightly ahead, even, of where the actual Federal Communications Commission is now. I called him, briefly, in 2011, to ask what he thought of spectrum policy, a subject on which academics and think-tankers jockey to see who can be more Coaseian. And “Coaseian” is the word they use. He declined, politely, to make any judgments. “I’m not up-to-date on things, you know,” he said.