The paper provides a critique of a new attack against the Coase theorem opened by A. Oleynik. Under close examination his attempts to repudiate the Coase theorem turn out to be theoretically invalid. Special discussion is devoted to the normative ideas of R. H. Coase.

The purpose of the present article is to continue my part in the debate over property rights in which I have become enmeshed with Harold Demsetz. It all began with the publication of my piece (Block 1977a), which was critical of Coase (1960) and of Demsetz (1966, 1967). The second round...