One of the more striking features of the debate over the Coase theorem is the wide variety of models and theoretical frameworks used to discuss, evaluate, or otherwise analyze Coase’s result - an artifact of an ambiguity in Coase’s reasoning. Some framed Coase’s result in a bargaining...

This paper revisits the path by which Coase developed the result now known as the Coase theorem, including the famous meeting at the home of Aaron Director during which Coase ‘converted’ a group of Chicago economists to his way of thinking. Drawing on published and archival sources, we...

This paper studies two cases designed by Coase, analyses the effects of legal rules of external damage liability on the costs and resource allocation of the parties at issue, and demonstrates that the Coase Theorem is not tenable even if all its assumptions or conditions hold. The role of...

This paper examines the welfare implications of different libel law standards as applied to newspapers in publishing stories. Our work extends the current literature by permitting private and public incentives to deviate, giving rise to an agency problem, and by formulating a two-stage decision...

Ronald Coase pioneered the transaction cost approach to the modern analysis of institutions, contracts, and property rights. We argue that core theory enhances Coase’s transaction cost approach by injecting considerations of coalition formation and stability into the analysis. Analysis of...