Ronald Harry Coase IRonald Harry Coase was born on 29 December 1910, in Willesden, a suburb of London, England. In his autobiography he says his father, as a methodical man he was, recorded in his diary that Ronald was born at 3:25 p.m. His father was a telegraphist in the Post Office, the same as his mother, who had been employed in the Post Office but ceased to work on being married. Ronald Coase remembers his childhood referring circumstances that perhaps could be difficult for most people, but he recalls them with a delicate sense of humor and sympathy. As a young boy he suffered from a weakness in his legs, which necessitated, or was thought to necessitate, the wearing of leg braces. As a result he went to the school for physical defectives run by the local council. "It was run by the same organization", Coase remembers, "that ran the school for "mental defectives", and there was "some overlapping in the curriculum"." Coase found himself in (literally) basket-weaving classes, and received virtually no academics until the age of 10. At the age of 12 he was awarded a scholarship to go to the Kilburn Grammar School where he considers he received a solid education, taking the matriculation examination in 1927, which he passed, with distinction in history and chemistry. He had to decide then what degree to take. History and science had to be discarded, the former because he had no idea about Latin and the latter because he didn't like mathematics, so that, he took a degree in commerce, which was the only other degree for which it was possible to study at the Kilburn Grammar School. At Kilburn, Ronald completed the first year of his B. Commerce degree and then passed on to the University of London. He went to the London School of Economics in October, 1929 to continue his studies for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. While studying there he met Arnold Plant, by that time appointed as Professor of Commerce (with special reference to Business Administration) at the London School of Economics in 1930. Ronald says that no doubt as a result of Plant's influence, the University of London awarded him a Sir Ernest Cassel Travelling Scholarship. He didn't know at that moment but he was beginning to walk on the road to becoming an economist. He spent his scholarship from 1931 to 1932 in the United States of America. During his study trip to America Ronal began to wander about the industrial heartland researching the methods of business firms, attempting to discover why American corporations were structured as they were. He had a personal and creative method; he asked businessmen why they did what they did. |