Mention "free market advocate" or "defender of private property rights" and the name Ronald Coase is certain to be included in the top ten list of virtually all cognoscenti of such matters. Nor can it be denied that there are numerous good and sufficient reasons for this assessment....

In his seminal work, "The Problem of Social Cost," Coase held that in cases of private property right disputes involving what have been called externalities, "with costless market transactions, the decision of the courts concerning liability for damage would be without effect on the allocation...

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...

Coase (Journal of Low and Economics 17(2):185-213, 1974) failed to appreciate that the construction and maintenance of nineteenth-century lighthouses were in part financed by British taxpayers. Bertrand (Cambridge Journal of Economics 30:389-402, 2006) rightly calls him to account. While...