Adaptive, Sequential Decision Making: Tce in the Early Years

Abstract: I distinguish the Transaction Cost Economics Concept, which was originated by Ronald Coase (1937, 1960, 1988), from the Transaction Cost Economics Project, which Coase generously ascribes to me (1972, 1975). The latter, on my reckoning, took shape as the product of a series of events where “one confounded thing led to another.” Good luck and antennae – to include education, teaching, work experience, and research – conspired to make TCE an obvious project upon which to work as TCE took on a life of its own. What are the lessons? Thomas Jefferson’s views on luck are apropos.