科斯把经济学科作为一个大企业加以考察,研究由经济学家所组成的这个企业的性质和作用边界。由于经济学家对经济制度运行的许多方面都是惊人的无知,在经济政策的主要运行方面还不能发挥决定性影响,而经济学家似乎乐意在一些知之甚少和判断很可能是错误的问题上给出建议。实际上,经济学家所能提供的、有采纳价值的建议,往往是由一些简单真理组成的。它们是一个理论体系的内涵提炼。历史表明,人们也倾向于拒绝或忽视那些简单真理,这说明经济学家对人性的知识还是非常不完备的。理论体系的建设需要有数理技术的进步,但是必须记得没有免费的统计。政府所以运行不良的最可能理由是政府做得太多,对它的许多活动而言,其边际产品已经为负。经济学家要逐渐积累“什么是政府应该保留下来的职能”的信息。 Coase examines the subject of economics as a large enterprise and examines the nature and role of the firm that consists of economists. Because economists are astonishingly ignorant of many aspects of the functioning of the economic system, they can not yet exert a decisive influence on the main operations of economic policy, and economists seem happy to speak on the question of what is probably poorly understood and the judgment is likely to be wrong advise. In fact, the advice that economists can offer that has value for adoption is often composed of simple truths. They are the connotation refinement of a theoretical system. History shows that people also tend to reject or ignore simple truths, which shows that economists’ knowledge of human nature is still very incomplete. The construction of the theoretical system requires the progress of mathematical techniques, but it must be remembered that there are no free statistics. The most likely reason for the poor performance of the government is that the government has done too much. For many of its activities, its marginal product is already negative. Economists need to gradually accumulate “what is the function the government should retain”.