Nobel winner Coase paved way for your smartphone

While not a household name like Milton Friedman, economist Ronald Coase was one of the great free market champions at the University of Chicago and laid the groundwork for one of tech's greatest games: bidding on wireless spectrum.

In the late 1950s, companies only had to meet legal requirements and pay relatively small fees to license radio wave frequencies. Coase argued that it was far more efficient to auction off the bands through negotiation and allow them to be bought and sold thereafter - basically, treat the frequencies like any other piece of property. At the time, this was considered heresy. The federal government has raised tens of billions of dollars through the bidding process since then.