Ronald H. Coase has been a member of the Law School's faculty since 1964. He won the Nobel Prize in 1991 for, among other things, the Coase Theorem. To this day he is the only Nobel Laureate to serve full time on the faculty of an American law school. In his honor, we have been hosting the annual Ronald H. Coase Lecture in Law and Economics since 1992. The lecture is geared towards our first year law students, so we hope that it will be accessible to you as well.
This year's Coase Lecture, on January 23, 2007, was delivered by Professor Anup Malani and titled "Culling Chickens." Professor Malani spoke about prevention of the spread of avian flu in chickens, particularly, although not exclusively, in third world countries. Much of the discussion centered around the economic principles that go into determining the appropriate rate to pay for potentially-diseased chickens in order to ensure that farmers will indeed turn them over for slaughter. A lively Q&A followed, and you can listen to the whole thing here.