Ronald Coase was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century,and one of the most unusual. His influence spans economics, law, and socialscience more broadly, and is due largely to two publications, the only two citedin the announcement of his Nobel Prize: “The Nature of the Firm” (1937) and“The Problem of Social Cost” (1960). These two articles are among the mostcitedworks in economics, and despite their age continue to be cited widelytoday (Landes and Lahr-Pastor 2011). The ideas Coase developed in these twoworks led to entirely new fields of inquiry in economics, law, management,and political science, and in conjunction with his article on using markets toallocate radio spectrum (Coase 1959), spawned new market design theoryand practice that helped to transform our society and enable innovation anddigitization (see, for example, Medema (1998), Ménard and Shirley (2005),Hazlett (2009), and Veljanovski (2015)).