A Nobel Winner

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1991 was awarded to Ronald H. Coase "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy". He was the first member of any law school faculty to win this award.

In his Presentation Speech, Professor Lars Werin of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told Professor Coase that "by your refusal to take anything for granted, and your skepticism toward conventional wisdom, you have succeeded in explaining the principles behind the institutional structure of the economy. You have remarkably improved our understanding of the way the economic system functions - although it took some time for the rest of us to realize it."

In his lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, Professor Coase self-deprecatingly stated, "I have made no innovations in high theory. My contribution to economics has been to urge the inclusion in our analysis of features of the economic system so obvious that, like the postman in G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown tale, The Invisible Man, they have tended to be overlooked."