The new series of Rural Reading Groups started off on 2nd October with our visiting researcher Valeria Sodano from Naples University introducing Coase’s classic paper “The Nature of the Firm”.  Written in 1937, the paper originates from a time where economics thinking was developing apace – just a year earlier John Maynard Keynes published his General Theory of Employment Interest and Money.  Coase’s paper went somewhat unnoticed for many years but since the 1970s, its relevance for understanding the co-ordinating function of entrepreneurs within firms and the increasingly blurred organisation boundaries of firms within networks has been increasingly recognised.  Valeria has applied this theoretical basis in studying food supply chains and the approach brings into question some of the fundamental assumptions of neo-classical economics.