Property is complex but nonetheless, decisions-makers need to make decisions relating to property all the time. This paper uses both traditional law and economics and behavioral law and economics to theoretically consider how decision-makers may make decisions with respect to property. It...

The purpose of this chapter is to link Ronald Coase's methodological approach to what he ‘learned' when he was at the London School of Economics (LSE) from Edwin Cannan and Arnold Plant. The main lesson Coase taught us and insisted upon was that economics should not be too ‘abstract' and...

As a student at the London School of Economics (LSE), Ronald Coase posed a seemingly naïve question that would, in time, fundamentally change the face of economics and earn him the Nobel Prize: ‘Why do firms exist?' The import of this simple question derived not only from the response Coase...

The main contribution of Coase1 is having proven that no institution is a free lunch (among others, Pagano, 2012). it means that every institution (e.g. the market and the firm) has non-null costs of functioning, i.e. transaction costs. in a world with positive transaction costs, the...

The methodological approaches of Ronald Coase and Richard Posner are compared and contrasted with regard to microeconomic theory and its application to law and economics. The central divide is whether positive transaction cost requires a major reworking of the core of neoclassical price theory...

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...

Ronald Coase merged two traditions in economics, marginalism and institutionalism. Neoclassical economics in the 1930s was characterized by an abstract conception of marginalism and frictionless resource movement. Marginal analysis did not seek to uncover the source of individual human...