A founder of Law and Economics and one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, Ronald H. Coase has transformed the way we think about the economy, particularly the role played by the law and other institutions in coping with transaction costs. This volume brings together Coase’s thirteen major writings on law and economics that spread over half a century, including “The Federal Communications Commission” (1959) and “The Problem of Social Cost” (1960), to which law and economics owes its birth. While all writings have been published before, three posthumously. While law and economics is today practiced as a brand of “economic imperialism,” analyzing law from the perspective of modern price theory, Coase approached law and economics to discover and elucidate the significance of law to the working and evolution of the economy, particularly through the impact law has on what he called “the institutional structure of production.”

Author Ronald H. Coase, born in London in 1910 and passed away in Chicago in 2013, was senior fellow in law and economics and Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1991 Coase received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science “for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy. ” Coase He was editor of the Journal of Law and Economics (1964-1982), the founding President of the International Society for New Institutional Economics (1997), and the founding editor of Man and the Economy (2013). Coase's representative works include “The Nature of the Firm” and “The Problem of Social Cost;” Coase authored British Broadcasting: A Study in Monopoly (1950), The Firm, the Market, and the Law (1988), and Essays on Economics and Economists (1994), and co-authored How China Became Capitalist (2012). Editor Ning Wang, educated at Beijing University and the University of Chicago, co-authored with Ronald H. Coase How China Became Capitalist (2012). Wang is senior fellow of Ronald Coase Institute and editor of Man and the Economy.

Preface and Remembrance: Coase—the Man and His Work ／ Richard A. Epstein ／ 1 Introduction: Law in the Economy—The Coasean Law and Economics ／ Ning Wang ／ 12 Series I On the Problem of Social Cost ／ 001 The Federal Communications Commission and the Broadcasting Industry ／ 005 The Federal Communications Commission ／ 031 Testimony to the Federal Communications Commission ／ 085 The Problem of Social Cost ／ 092 Notes on the Problem of Social Cost ／ 151 Comment on Thomas W. Hazlett: Assigning Property Rights to Radio Spectrum Users Why Did FCC License Auctions Take 67 Years? ／ 180 Series II The Market for Ideas ／ 185 The Market for Goods and the Market for Ideas ／ 187 Advertising and Free Speech ／ 199 Series III Empirical Study ／ 245 Payola in Radio and Television Broadcasting ／ 249 Blackmail ／ 327 Series IV History of Law and Economics ／ 351 Law and Economics and A. W. Brian Simpson ／ 353 Law and Economics At Chicago ／ 373 Law and Economics: A Personal Journey ／ 392