Coase’s work emphasized the economic importance of very small markets and made a new, more marginalist form of economic “institutionalism” acceptable within mainstream economics. A Coasean market is an association of persons with competing claims on a legal entitlement that can be traded....

We examine experimentally the bargaining process and the final allocation of payoffs in games that differ in terms of whether or not the core exists and in the initial allocation of property rights among the players. The paper highlights the interaction between property rights, transaction costs...

A theory of the economic aspects of the law of marriage. In The Nature of the Firm (1937), Ronald Coase noted that although contractual exchanges generally maximize social welfare, in complex business environments the transaction costs of contractual relationships may be prohibitively high....

The Coase Theorem predicts that, if there are no transaction costs, parties will always contract their way to an efficient outcome. Thus, no matter which legal rules society chooses, "Coasean bargains" will lead to efficient results. There are always some transaction costs. However, transaction...

Based on a case of contracting for environmental property rights, we explore several implications of applying Coase's insights. The case study adds empirical content to transaction costs concepts by analyzing the design and implementation of a contractual arrangement between a pollutee - a...

This paper clarifies and synthesizes elements of the two decade old debate concerning the Coase theorem and the empty core. Five lessons can be derived from this debate. First, the Coase theorem may break down when there are more than two participants (provided the additional participants bring...

The Coase Theorem is analyzed in a setting in which pollution damages are a stochastic function of emissions and of natural environmental variability (e.g., weather). When pollution damages are stochastic, emissions create financial risks. Pollution levels allowed under Coasean contracts then in...

In post-Mao China Coase’s theorem unexpectedly worked in the most fluid of situations. Property rights were in the making while the economy was moving towards capitalism. Information and communication had to overcome huge political obstacles. Negative free riding was transformed into positive...

Consumers claim to hate marketing - mostly, because they get too much unwanted marketing. In response, regulators develop medium-by-medium marketing suppression regulations. Unfortunately, these ad hoc solutions do little to satisfy consumers, and dynamic technologies and business practices...