The Teacher Versus the Student: Plant and Coase on the Firm

Abstract

Abstract Plant versus Coase on the firm. This paper focuses on Arnold Plant (Coase’s teacher) and his little known contribution to the theory of the firm, ‘Centralize or Decentralize?’ A very brief biography of Plant is given followed by an outline of his paper and then the paper is examined and compared to Coases’s ‘The Nature of the Firm’.