Between LSE and Cambridge: Accounting for Ronald Coase’s Fascination with Alfred Marshall

For most economists at Chicago, Marshall was simply an input, the supplier of an approach to economic analysis. For Ronald Coase, however, Marshall was much more than this—a subject of fascination and, at times, almost a reverence and obsession. Trained in the late 1920s and early 1930s at the London School of Economics, where indifference and even antipathy toward Marshall was widespread, and a member of the LSE faculty from 1935 until his departure for the United States in 1951, Coase would not have ranked high on the list of those expected to become Marshall’s first biographer—a project that Coase finally abandoned only late in life—let alone one who drew on Marshall’s methodological approach to castigate both modern economics generally and certain of his (“Marshallian”) Chicago colleagues in particular. Coase’s affinity for Marshall, whom he considered both a “great economist” and a “flawed human being,” requires some explanation, clues toward which can be found both in his published writings and in the voluminous materials from his researches on Marshall now available in Coase’s archives. This paper examines Coase’s biographical work on Marshall and his discussions of Marshall’s economics for clues as to the sources of Coase’s affinity for Marshall. The evidence suggests explanations that are at once personal and professional.