Ronald Coase received the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences in 1991 for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy.
He studied for the Bachelor of Commerce degree at LSE from 1929 to 1932 and was a member of the LSE staff from 1935 to 1951. LSE's Department of Economics and Economica journal now co-host the bi-annual Economica-Coase lecture series.
He published The Nature of the Firm, a new concept of economic analysis, transaction costs, and the reasons for why firms exist. This article, together with The Problem of Social Cost (1961), made the breakthrough in economic science that led to his Nobel Prize.