Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions, in contrast to what would be suggested by a reasoning extending the Coase Theorem to politics? Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions because of differences in the beliefs and ideologies of their peoples or leaders? Or...

International supply chains require coordination of numerous activities across multiple countries and firms. We adapt a model of supply chains and apply it to an international trade setting. In each chain, the measure of tasks completed within a firm is determined by transaction costs and the...

The Political Coase Theorem (PCT) states that, in the absence of transaction costs, agents should agree to implement efficient policies regardless of the distribution of bargaining power among them. This paper uses a laboratory experiment to explore how commitment problems undermine the validity...

The Coase theorem implies that, in a world of positive transaction costs, any of a number of strategies, including judicially enforced private contracts, judicially enforced laws, or even government regulation, may be the cheapest way to bring about efficient resource allocation. Unfortunately,...

External validity is a challenge in treatment effect estimation. Even in randomized trials, the experimental sample often differs from the population of interest. If participation decisions are explained by observed variables such differences can be overcome by reweighting. However,...

The presence of a heavy truck on the road can impose an externality if accidents occur that would not have otherwise. We find each additional truck on the road increases the risk of a truck accident—but also, at an even higher rate, the risk of a car-on-car collision. Our estimates imply two...