ABSTRACT
Ronald Coase, Guido Calabresi, and Richard Posner are the central intellectual figures in the rise of modern law and economics. Together, their combined efforts demonstrated the central significance of economic analysis to the understanding both of the effects of the law and of its content. Coase was interested in the effects of legal rules on resource allocation in the society. The essence of his analysis was to show that markets could overturn any effect a court thought it might be achieving through a legal ruling, subject to limitations of transaction costs. Despite Posner’s recognition of markets, the efficiency-of-the-law approach basically negates any effect markets might have on the allocation of resources, quite to the opposite of Coase. In 1993, the group convened a conference to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Introductory remarks by Coase and by the author's former colleague Oliver Williamson sketched out the achievements of the associated scholars.
