Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 70 of the late Nobel laureate Ronald Coase’s insightful 1972 paper “Industrial Organization: A Proposal for Research” (link added):

It seems to have been implicitly assumed that the same considerations which led welfare economists to see the need for government action would also motivate those whose active support was required to bring about the political changes necessary to implement these policy recommendations. In this, we are wiser than we were, in large part because of the new “economic theory of politics.” We are beginning to perceive the nature of the forces which bring about changes in the law – and there is no necessary relationship between the strength of forces favoring such changes and the gain from such changes as seen by economists. It suggests that economists interested in promoting particular economic policies should investigate the framework of our political system to discover what modifications in it are required if their economic policies are to be adopted, and should count in the cost of these political changes.

DBx: Ronald Coase was born 111 years ago today. He died in 2013 at the age of 102. His deep insights remain far too under-appreciated – and in some cases simply misunderstood – by the mainstream of the economics profession.