Even in a world with zero transaction costs, status seeking can prevent efficient Coasean bargaining. Using simple illustrations and various examples, we show that ignoring this impediment can explain the failure of some negotiations where an efficient bargaining seems a priori reachable and...

The allocative efficiency outcome predicted by the Coase theorem critically depends on the assumption that, barring high transaction costs, parties will bargain after litigation and mis-allocated entitlements by courts will be re-allocated through voluntary exchanges. Ward Farnsworth's 1999...

The paper is a comment on "Transparency, Complementarity and Holdout" by Roy Chowdhuryand Sengupta(2012). They analyse a model of multilateral bargaining under the assumption of common discount factor. We demonstrate a strong drawback of employing such assumptions

The real purpose behind Ronald Coase's article, “The Problem of Social Cost” is to point out that government intervention as a solution to supposed market imperfections are not costless. Since government interventions can perhaps lead to greater costs than the problem the intervention is...

During my first weeks as a graduate student in economics, a professor described the Coase Theorem as “nearly a tautology:” Assume a world in which bargaining is costless. If there are gains from trade, the Theorem tells us, the parties will trade. The initial assignment of property rights...

Using a unique combination of datasets and estimation techniques, we test whether private lease negotiations to extract oil and natural gas exhibit features of Coasian efficiency. We demonstrate that measures of wealth (including income, house square footage, and land acreage), typically...