Embracing at arm’s length: Ronald Coase’s uneasy relationship with the Chicago school

Abstract

Abstract This paper takes up Ronald Coase’s views on the Chicago school, as found in his published and, especially, unpublished writings. Coase’s personal and professional papers, recently opened for examination in the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, reveal that his commentaries on the Chicago Economics Department and the Chicago school began already in the early 1960s, prior to his appointment at Chicago. These and later commentaries at once reveal a measure of kinship and significant differences of viewpoint, particularly as respects economic method. Pulling back the lens a bit further, the paper provides additional evidence for the heterogeneity of views on fundamental questions that existed even among ostensibly cornerstone members of the so-called ‘Chicago school’.