V ponedeljek je umrl nobelovec Ronald Coase, star 102 leti. Znan je po dveh ključnih delih. Pri 26-ih je objavil članek o naravi in mejah podjetja (“The Nature of the Firm“, 1937), kjer je uvedel koncept transakcijskih stroškov in ki mu je pet desetletij kasneje prinesel Nobelovo nagrado (1991). Seveda pa nagrada temelji tudi na njegovem drugem delu o problemu družbenih stroškov (“The Problem of Social Cost“, 1960), ki tudi uporablja koncept transakcijskih stroškov. Na podlagi tega dela je George Stigler kasneje izpeljal t.i. Coasov teorem , ki pa se mu je Coase odpovedal.* Coase je večino akademskega življenja posvetil “združevanju realnega sveta z ekonomijo”, torej upoštevanju “institucij” (prava, kulture, politike, izobrazbe itd.) v ekonomskih modelih. Brez upoštevanja realnih, izkustvenih in empirično merljivih značilnosti so po njegovem ekonomski modeli zgolj šolski pripomočki brez prave napovedne moči.

But this would ignore the task to which Coase bent himself for six decades: convincing other economists that the real world, the actual, empirically observable and measurable world, existed and was worth their time. During Coase’s lifetime, academic economists fell in love with models of markets removed from actual experience. He referred to this as “blackboard economics,” a practice “disdainful of what happens in the real world,” he wrote in 1998, “but it is one to which economists have become accustomed, and they live in their world without discomfort.”

From 1964 to 1982, Coase edited the Journal of Law and Economics, an attempt to interest legal scholars in numbers and economists in the world of man. And as recently as last year, he was trying to launch a new journal. He wanted to call it Man and the Economy. In an essay on Nov. 20, 2012, in Harvard Business Review, Coase worried that economists wrote for each other, instead of for other disciplines or for the business community. “It is suicidal for the field to slide into a hard science of choice,” he wrote, “ignoring the influences of society, history, culture, and politics on the working of the economy.” Ronald Coase spent his life trying to save economics from itself.

Vir: Brendan Greeley, Bloomberg Businessweek

* Coasov teorem, kot ga je leta 1966 na podlagi Coasovega članka iz leta 1960 razvil Stigler, govori o problemu učinkovitosti ekonomske alokacije v primeru eksternalij. Natančneje, pravi, da v primeru obstoja eksternalij (družbenih stroškov) in kadar ni transakcijskih stroškov, bodo pogajanja med ekonomskimi subjekti vedno privedla do učinkovite rešitve ne glede na prvotno alokacijo lastninskih pravic. Iz tega tudi izhaja, da kadar obstajajo ovire za pogajanja ali ko lastninske pravice niso dobro opredeljene, potem prava Coaseva (učinkovita) pogajanja niso možna. Sam Coase je temu teoremu odpovedal, češ da ne predstavlja dobro tega, o čemer govori njegov članek. Coase namreč v istem članku iz leta 1960 govori, da so v realnem svetu transakcijski stroški redko dovolj nizki, da bi omogočili učinkovita pogajanja, iz česar sledi, da je teorem v realnem svetu praktično neuporaben.

Ta Coaseva realističnost oziroma navezava na realni svet se kaže tudi v njegovem odnosu do ideologije (in regulacije, ki je za mnoge ekonomiste, predvsem pa iz Čikaške šole, bolj kot ne ideološko vprašanje):

When asked what he considered his politics to be, Coase stated, “I really don’t know. I don’t reject any policy without considering what its results are. If someone says there’s going to be regulation, I don’t say that regulation will be bad. Let’s see. What we discover is that most regulation does produce, or has produced in recent times, a worse result. But I wouldn’t like to say that all regulation would have this effect because one can think of circumstances in which it doesn’t.”

Vir: Wikipedia