As a tribute to Ronald Coase, the Institute for New Economic Thinking has a blog post today which reproduces a piece written by Coase, which argues for the need to reconnect the study of economics with the actual economy! In other words, Coase wanted economists to stop building their elegant mathematical models and study how the economy actually works. Armen Alchian, another great economist who passed away this year, was also an advocate of economists trying to understand the economy and how economic forces work.
In the short video clip below, the 101-year-old Coase shares some of his ideas about the subject of economics.