The spiral staircase library, the British political and economic library, was founded in 1896 and is the largest social science library in the world. Established in 1896, located in lionel robbins Building. As the national social science library in Britain, its collection has important domestic and international value. The library was once open 24 hours a day, but this plan was stopped in 2007. Generally, it is open from 8 am to midnight every day, and the examination period is 24 hours. About 6500 people visit the library every day. There is also a special international research library, which is used by 65,438+02,000 off-campus readers every year.

Libraries all over the world collect books and periodicals, but their collections are written in major European languages. The library has more than 4 million books, covering major social science fields. Since the beginning of19th century, the library has a large number of government publications, statistical data and academic journals. Since 1946, the library has been designated by the United Nations as an archival library for storing documents and publications published by the United Nations. The museum also collects official materials from other international organizations, including OCED, ILO, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization.

In 2000, the college spent 35 million pounds to rebuild the original library. The new library was designed by Foster Architects and adopted the controversial spiral staircase design. The new library has 450 desktop computers and 226 laptop sockets. The fourth and fifth floors are "LSE research rooms" for scholars. The new library is still the favorite place for teachers and students. According to the survey, the number of books borrowed by students of London School of Economics and Political Science is four times that of the British average (about 350 books). 1990 won the nobel prize in economics for his theoretical work in financial economics.

Ronald coase won the 199 1 Nobel Prize in Economics because of his important discovery and classification of transaction costs and perfect definition of property rights. The winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 20001year is famous for the article "Lemon Market: Uncertainty of Quality and Market Mechanism" published in Economic Quarterly 1970. In this article, he pointed out that this would damage the market and called it information asymmetry.

At the same time, william phillips of London School of Economics and Political Science has never won the Nobel Prize, but his famous Phillips Curve (65438-0958) has become an important basis for the government to formulate economic policies on unemployment and inflation. In addition to academic contributions, universities and their graduates continue to make important contributions to the economic field.

In the past two assessments (1996 and 200 1), the British research assessment exercise rated the Department of Economics of the London School of Economics as the highest 5A. Many NGOs generally rank the London School of Economics and Political Science and its economic series as the top 20 in the world, and most of the time it is the best institution outside the United States. Although its research direction is mainly economics, London Economics and Politics is one of the top 12 research institutions in the world.