科斯论法律经济学Coase on Law and Economics（英文版）科斯文集

Inspired by Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, and Frank Knight, Coase conducted economics throughout his long life as a moral philosopher. For him, economics is not a science of choice that “studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses,” but a study of men seeking peace, justice, and prosperity in society through the social division and contractual organization of production. Unless economics is pursued as part of what Smith called the “science of a legislator,” it risks losing relevance to our striving to understand how the economy works and what can be done to make it work better. For current and future students of the economy, this volume will be cherished as a source of inspiration, ideas, and courage.

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