We delineate the various ways in which rights to environmental and other resources can be assigned to individuals or groups. We then examine models of individual and group interactions, drawing out their implications for the ways in which resources will be utilized and managed under various...

This study explores mechanism design for networks of interpersonal relationships. Agents' social (i.e., altruistic or spiteful) preferences and private payoffs are all subject to asymmetric information; utility is (quasi-)linear, types are independent. I show that any network of at least three...

This paper explores the extent to which the presence of ex-ante transaction costs may lead to failures of the Coase Theorem. In particular we identify and investigate the basic 'hold-up problem' which arises whenever the parties to a Coasian negotiation have to pay some ex-ante costs for the...

This Chapter analyzes the ways in which digital platforms such as Uber and Airbnb are perfecting the deal and lowering transaction costs. The chapter argues that the three stages of pre-deal, deal-making, and post-deal, 1) search costs; 2) bargaining and decision costs; and 3) policing and...

If communication involves some transactions cost to both sender and recipient, what policy ensures that correct messages - those with positive social surplus - get sent? Filters block messages that harm recipients but benefit senders by more than transactions costs. Taxes can block positive...

If individuals own the right to take any action that they please, and are free to contract about behavior, will outcomes be efficient in all situations? That is, does the Coase theorem hold? We study this classic question through the lens of a non-cooperative model of contract negotiations,...

One of the main contributions of Ronald H. Coase was to demonstrate how mainstream economics was based on a contradictory amalgam of costly physical inputs and free institutional resources, and to gave origin the economics of institutions: each institution is a mode of allocation and...