Ronald Coase, the British-born University of Chicago economist whose Nobel Prize-winning work on the role of corporations stemmed from visits in the early 1930s to American companies including Ford Motor Co. and Union Carbide, has died. He was 102.

He died yesterday at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago, according to a news release from the University of Chicago. No cause was given.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Science awarded Coase the 1991 Nobel in economics “for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy.”

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