Mark Pennington on The Influence of Coase on Economic Policy – The Next 50 Years

The late Professor Ronald Coase made huge contributions to the development of economics over 75 years. From his paper on the theory of the firm, which was published in 1937 (and cited when he won the Nobel Prize), to his IEA book How China Became Capitalist (published when he was 101), his many insights have had a profound effect on our understanding of a number of different areas of policy. How we deal with environmental problems, land-use planning, broadcasting, telecommunications and transport privitisation are just five areas of current policy that have benefited from or could benefit from Professor Coase’s ideas.

In this panel discussion, we are asking our panellists to describe briefly the importance of one or more of Prof. Coase’s insights and explain the relevance of his insights to government policy for the future generation.

Speakers: Rupert Darwall, author and expert at The Centre for Policy Studies; Prof. Mark Pennington, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London; Prof. Martin Ricketts, Professor of Economic Organisation, University of Buckingham; Dr. Cento Veljanovski, Case Associates and Dr. Richard Wellings, Deputy Editorial Director, Institute of Economic Affairs.