The Exchange and Enforcement of Property Rights Author(S): Harold Demsetz Source: Journal of Law and Economics, Vol

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Exchange and Enforcement of Property Rights Author(S): Harold Demsetz Source: Journal of Law and Economics, Vol The Exchange and Enforcement of Property Rights Author(s): Harold Demsetz Source: Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 7, (Oct., 1964), pp. 11-26 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/724917 Accessed: 05/05/2008 21:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org THE EXCHANGE AND ENFORCEMENT OF PROPERTY RIGHTS* HAROLD DEMSETZ Universityof Chicago OUReconomic system, with its specializationof economicactivities into separateownership and decisionunits, requiresboth controlover goods and exchangeof goods if it is to cope with the diversityof wants of specialist producers.This paperis concernedwith the fact that the exchangeof goods and the maintenanceof controlover the use of goodsimpose costs on traders and owners.It is also concernedwith the cost of governmentalternatives to the marketplace. We seek to establishboth the importanceand the wide role of these costs in economiclife. A largepart of our argumentwill be illustratedby two importantcontro- versiesin welfareeconomics in which we will show, on the one hand, that zero pricingof scarcegoods need not resultin inefficiency,and, on the other, that zero pricingof "public"goods may result in inefficiency.The standard criticismsof resourceallocation by the market,which turn on the market's failureto price "external"effects and on its tendencyto price"public" goods, are shown to be invalid. To do this we extend the well knownaxiom that thereis no such thing as a free scarcegood by includingsuch goodsas mar- kets, governmentbureaus, and policingdevices. Throughoutthis paper, our attentionis confinedto the problemof efficiency within the frameworkof smoothlyrunning markets and governments,in the sense that we assumethat persons,whether in their capacityas civil servants or as privatecitizens, do not makearithmetic errors in calculating,or, at least, that they do not tend to makemore errors in one role than in another.We do not concernourselves with problemsof monopolyby either a firm or the government,but the problemof imperfectknowledge is treated. Instead of "externaleffects" or "neighborhoodeffects" we will use the phrase"side effects" to identifythose for whichno accountseems to be taken in the market place. This avoids the flavor of location and of being necessarily outside of the market place that seem to be associated with the morecommon names for these effects. * The author wishes to thank Armen A. Alchian, Gary S. Becker, William H. MeckIing, Peter Pashigian, and George J. Stigler for their comments. 11 12 THE JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS I. EXCHANGECOST Recent R. Developments. H. Coase,1 in an important article written recently for this Journal, demonstrates that there is, in general, nothing special about side effects that rules out the possibility of their being taken account of by the market. These effects can be taken into account by market transactions between the parties affected once the courts have established who has what right of action. Under competitive conditions and assuming zero exchange costs, these transactions will result in an efficient solution to the scarcity problem. Thus, if ranchers are given the right to allow their cattle roam to and the cattle stray accidentally onto unfenced farm land, it will be in the farmer's interest to bring the damage they cause to the rancher's attention by offering to pay the rancher to reduce the number of cattle foraging nearby. If the rancher disregards this offer, he sacrifices a potential receipt equal to the crop damage. Thus, the crop damage becomes a private cost to the rancher of raising additional cattle and will be taken account of in his calculations. Moreover, Coase points out the efficiency of the solution with respect to the number of cattle and the size of the crops in the absence of exchange costs is independent of whether the farmer or rancher is legally liable for the damage. The party not held liable, of course, acquires the right to act in ways which may have harmful side effects. The assignment of the for liability cropdamage to the rancher would lead to a direct accounting for this cost in his operations andhe would need to decide whether to reduce his herdor pay the farmer to reduce the crophe plants. Whether the farmer will findit worthwhile to pay enough to the rancher to reduce his herd or whether the rancher can pay enough to the farmer to reduce the area he cultivates depends on whether the value lost because of the cropreduction is greater or less than the value lost because the size of theherd is reduced. Whichever way therights are initially assigned, the outcome of the subsequent bargaining will be that which maximizes the value of output. Coasehas advanced the analysis of theroles that can be played by the market and the government astep beyond its previous position. For now Coasehas shown that if exchange costs are positive, it is necessary to ask whethergovernment cantake the harmful effects of anaction into account at less than market cost can the or, indeed, if the resulting resource realignment isworth the costof taking the side effects into account atall. Misapplication of Optimality Theorems. The question which asks whether or not realignment is worthwhile brings to light an improper usage to which wefrequently have put our optimality theorems. The cost of using the market relative to the costof using a political mechanism has seldom been considered explicitlyor in detail in the bulk of the theory of welfare economics. This 1 Coase,The Problem of Social Cost, 3 J. Law & Econ. 1-44 (1960). PROPERTY RIGHTS 13 has led to an improper usage of those theorems. As a consequence of the conventional approach to these problems, it has not been recognized that the very conditions under which side effects are believed to lead to inefficiency are those conditions for which the welfare theorems used are inapplicable. The usual analysis of market inefficiency in such cases attributes the diffi- culty to the absence of markets in which "appropriate" prices for measuring side effects can be revealed.2 But absence of a market or of a price can be consistent with efficiency when optimality theorems are appropriately inter- preted. For produced goods, the optimality theorems require equalities among various marginal rates of substitution. These same optimality conditions, however, do not require such equalities for goods and services that are not produced in the final efficient equilibrium; for these we have corner solutions involving inequalities. Thus, a basic premise in requiring equalities is that we are talking about goods which we require to be produced in positive quantities. We then turn to the competitive model and observe that market prices will often bring about the equalities required for produced commodities and services. But, we ask, what if some goods produce side effects which are not exchanged over a market? We answer that the market fails to provide us with incentives which will guide behavior to take account of the side effects and that, therefore, the required equalities will be absent. The allegation is that even perfectly competitive markets fail to achieve efficiency. But, this reason- ing generally fails to take account of the fact that the provision of a market (for the side effect) is itself a valuable and costly service. Where a market, or the political action which would be its counterpart, does not exist, this service is not being produced. If this service is not being produced some inequalities (instead of the equalities required for produced goods) among our marginal rates of substitution and marginal rates of transformation may be consistent with efficiency, as will be the case if the cost of taking account of side effects through either the market or the government exceeds the value of realigning 2 Cf. Arrow, Uncertaintyand the Welfare Economics of Medical Care, 53 Am. Econ. Rev. 941, 944-45 (1963): An individualwho fails to be immunizednot only risks his own health, a disutility which presumablyhe has weighedagainst the utility of avoiding the procedure,but also that of others. In an ideal price system, there would be a price which he would have to pay to anyone whose health is endangered,a price sufficientlyhigh so that the others would feel compensated;or, alternatively,there would be a price which would be paid to him by others to induce him to undergo the immunizationprocedure .... It is, of course, not hard to see that such price systems could not, in fact, be practical; to approximate an optimal state it would be necessary to have collective intervention in the form of subsidy or tax or compulsion. and Bator, The Anatomy of Market Failure, 72 Q.J. Econ. 351, 353-54 (1958): Pareto-efficient. points . are characterizedby a complete set of marginal-rate-of- substitution .
Recommended publications
  • The Death of the Firm
    Article The Death of the Firm June Carbone† & Nancy Levit†† INTRODUCTION A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An established body of law specifies the rights and obligations of the people (including shareholders, officers, and employees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or another. When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are ex- tended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people.1 In the Supreme Court’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lob- by—and more generally in corporate and employment law—the firm as entity is disappearing as a unit of legal analysis. We use the term “firm” in this Article in the sense that Ronald Coase did to describe a form of business organization that or- ders the production of goods and services through use of a sys- tem internal to the enterprise rather than through the use of independent contractors.2 The idea of an “entity” in this sense † Robina Chair in Law, Science and Technology, University of Minneso- ta Law School. †† Curators’ and Edward D. Ellison Professor of Law, University of Mis- souri – Kansas City School of Law. We thank William K. Black, Margaret F. Brinig, Naomi Cahn, Paul Callister, Mary Ann Case, Lynne Dallas, Robert Downs, Max Eichner, Martha Fineman, Barb Glesner Fines, Claire Hill, Brett McDonnell, Amy Monahan, Charles O’Kelley, Hari Osofsky, Irma Russell, Dan Schwarcz, Lynn Stout, and Erik P.M. Vermeulen for their helpful comments on drafts of this Article and Tracy Shoberg and Shiveta Vaid for their research support.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Robert Gibbons and John Roberts
    Introduction Robert Gibbons and John Roberts Organizational economics involves the use of economic logic and methods to understand the existence, nature, design, and performance of organizations, especially managed ones. As this handbook documents, economists working on organizational issues have now generated a large volume of exciting research, both theoretical and empirical. However, organizational economics is not yet a fully recognized field in economics—for example, it has no JournalofEconomic Literature classification number, and few doctoral programs offer courses in it. The intent of this handbook is to make the existing research in organizational economics more accessible to economists and thereby to promote further research and teaching in the field. The Origins of Organizational Economics As Kenneth Arrow (1974: 33) put it, “organizations are a means of achieving the benefits of collective action in situations where the price system fails,” thus including not only business firms but also consortia, unions, legislatures, agencies, schools, churches, social movements, and beyond. All organizations, Arrow (1974: 26) argued, share “the need for collective action and the allocation of resources through nonmarket methods,” suggesting a range of possible structures and processes for decisionmaking in organizations, including dictatorship, coalitions, committees, and much more. Within Arrow’s broad view of the possible purposes and designs of organizations, many distinguished economists can be seen as having addressed organizational issues
    [Show full text]
  • The Property Right Paradigm Armen A. Alchian; Harold Demsetz The
    The Property Right Paradigm Armen A. Alchian; Harold Demsetz The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 33, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History. (Mar., 1973), pp. 16-27. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28197303%2933%3A1%3C16%3ATPRP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A The Journal of Economic History is currently published by Economic History Association. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/eha.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Thu Jun 7 08:00:21 2007 The Property Right Paradigm INTRODUCTION CONOMICS textbooks invariably describe the important eco- E nomic choices that all societies must make by the following three questions: What goods are to be produced? How are these goods to be produced? Who is to get what is produced? This way of stating social choice problems is misleading.
    [Show full text]
  • DOUGLASS C. NORTH and NON-MARXIST INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINISM Joseph R
    Journal of Libertarian Studies Volume 16, no. 4 (Fall 2002), pp. 101–137 2002 Ludwig von Mises Institute www.mises.org DOUGLASS C. NORTH AND NON-MARXIST INSTITUTIONAL DETERMINISM Joseph R. Stromberg* Men imprison themselves within structures of their own creation because they are self-mystified. — Edward Palmer Thompson1 Douglass North has written many essays and books over forty or more years in which he has sought to reintegrate economic theory and economic history. His project became more and more ambitious over time, producing interesting insights, questions, and narratives. His early interests and work centered on the economics of location, transpor- tation costs, and interregional economic relations in American history. In mid-career, he seized on transaction costs—modified from time to time by other “variables”—as the main motor of history, economic history, and institutional development. It was North’s approach to combining history and theory that help- ed him bring into being the New Economic History and, later, what North and his school call the New Institutional History. For his efforts, North shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics with Robert W. Fogel, a University of Chicago economist who is a major practitioner of Cliometrics, or quantitative economic history. The Nobel Comm- ittee cited North and Fogel “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.”2 *Historian-in-Residence, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama. 1E.P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London: Merlin Press, 1978), p. 165. 2“Press Release,” The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, www.nobel.se/economics/laureates/1993/press.html.
    [Show full text]
  • Nine Lives of Neoliberalism
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Plehwe, Dieter (Ed.); Slobodian, Quinn (Ed.); Mirowski, Philip (Ed.) Book — Published Version Nine Lives of Neoliberalism Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Plehwe, Dieter (Ed.); Slobodian, Quinn (Ed.); Mirowski, Philip (Ed.) (2020) : Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, ISBN 978-1-78873-255-0, Verso, London, New York, NY, https://www.versobooks.com/books/3075-nine-lives-of-neoliberalism This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/215796 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative
    [Show full text]
  • United States Competition Policy in Crisis: 1890-1955 Herbert Hovenkamp
    University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Minnesota Law Review 2009 United States Competition Policy in Crisis: 1890-1955 Herbert Hovenkamp Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Hovenkamp, Herbert, "United States Competition Policy in Crisis: 1890-1955" (2009). Minnesota Law Review. 483. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/483 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Minnesota Law Review collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Article United States Competition Policy in Crisis: 1890-1955 Herbert Hovenkampt INTRODUCTION: HISTORICAL EXPLANATION AND THE MARGINALIST REVOLUTION The history of legal policy toward the economy in the United States has emphasized interest group clashes that led to regula- tory legislation.' This is also true of the history of competition policy. 2 Many historians see regulatory history as little more than a political process in which well-organized, dominant interest groups obtain political advantage and protect their particular in- dustry from competition, typically at the expense of consumers.3 t Ben V. & Dorothy Willie Professor, University of Iowa College of Law. Thanks to Christina Bohannan for commenting on a draft. Copyright 0 2009 by Herbert Hovenkamp. 1. See, e.g., WILLIAM J. NOVAK, THE PEOPLE'S WELFARE: LAW AND REGULA- TION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA 83-84 (1996); THE REGULATED ECONO- MY: A HISTORICAL APPROACH TO POLITICAL ECONOMY 12-22 (Claudia Goldin & Gary D.
    [Show full text]
  • Eli Heckscher,Sweden,Liberalism
    Discuss this article at Journaltalk: http://journaltalk.net/articles/5902 ECON JOURNAL WATCH 13(1) January 2016: 75–99 Eli Heckscher’s Ideological Migration Toward Market Liberalism Benny Carlson1 LINK TO ABSTRACT Sweden is a country that is often misunderstood by outsiders, and even by Swedes themselves. From the latter part of the nineteenth century, Sweden’s eco- nomic policies were quite liberal, and for 100 years, say from 1870 to 1970, the economy grew rapidly (see Schön 2011; Bergh 2014). During this period Sweden enjoyed relatively high-quality public debate—a tradition in which Sweden still remains quite exceptional. Leading economists took active part and influenced opinion; they were genuine leaders in public discourse. Five titans stand out: Knut Wicksell, Gustav Cassel, Eli Heckscher, Bertil Ohlin, and Gunnar Myrdal.2 The first three were highly liberal. Ohlin began as liberal, like his mentor Heckscher, but moved to a position of social liberalism, or moderate welfare-statism, and became a leading politician (Berggren 2013). Myrdal represents Sweden’s turn toward social democracy (Carlson 2013). Here I tell of Eli Heckscher (1879–1952), and in particular of his ideological development. For most of his life Heckscher was the most firmly principled eco- nomic liberal Sweden had. He fought against state-socialist tendencies, Keynesian crisis policy, and economic planning, and had only one real rival, Gustav Cassel, 1. Lund University School of Economics and Management, 221 00 Lund, Sweden. I thank MIT Press for their permission to incorporate in this article some material that was previously published in a chapter of Eli Heckscher, International Trade, and Economic History, edited by Ronald Findlay, Rolf G.
    [Show full text]
  • John Kenneth Galbraith
    JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH The Economic Legacy Edited by Stephen P. Dunn Volume I The Large Firm, Keynesianism, Price Control and Economic Development fl Routledge jj^^ Taylor & Francis Croup LONDON AND NEW YORK CONTENTS VOLUME I THE LARGE FIRM, KEYNESIANISM, PRICE CONTROL'AND' ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Acknowledgements xix Chronological table of reprinted articles and chapters xxiii General introduction 1 Books by John Kenneth Galbraith 19 Introduction 21 PARTI The emergence of the large firm 29 > 1 The quantitative position of marketing in the United States 31 J. K. GALBRAITH AND J. D. BLACK 2 Monopoly power and price rigidities 47 J. K. GALBRAITH 3 Rational and irrational consumer preference 61 J. K. GALBRAITH 4 Monopoly and the concentration of economic power 68 J. K. GALBRAITH 5 The defense of business: a strategic appraisal 95 JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH CONTENTS PART 2 Early Keynesianism 107 6 The maintenance of agricultural production during the depression: the explanations reviewed 109 JOHN K. GALBRAITH AND JOHN D. BLACK 7 Fiscal policy and the employment-investment controversy 124 J. K. GALBRAITH 8 Public works policy and unemployment _ 136 J. K. GALBRAITH PART 3 Price control 147 9 Defense financing and inflation potentialities 149 ALVIN H. HANSEN 10 The selection and timing of inflation controls 159 J. K. GALBRAITH 11 Some additional comments on the inflation symposium 165 ALVIN H. HANSEN 12 Price control: some lessons from the first phase 169 J. K. GALBRAITH PART 4 A Theory of Price Control: defence and debate 177 13 Reflections on price control 179 J. K. GALBRAITH 14 The disequilibrium system 191 J.
    [Show full text]
  • The Environmental Optimism of Elinor Ostrom Edited By: Megan E
    The Environmental Optimism of Elinor Ostrom Edited by: Megan E. Jenkins, Randy T Simmons, and Camille H. Wardle The Environmental Optimism of Elinor Ostrom Edited by: Megan E. Jenkins, Randy T Simmons, and Camille H. Wardle Copyright © 2020 the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University All rights reserved Paperback ISBN 978-1-7348561-0-1 eISBN 978-1-7348561-1-8 Cover design and typesetting by Brooke Jacques The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University 3525 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322 www. thecgo.org “As an institutionalist studying empirical phenomena, I presume that individuals try to solve problems as effectively as they can. It is my responsibility as a scientist to ascertain what problem individuals are trying to solve and what factors help or hinder them in these efforts.” –Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences Contents Introduction ................................................................................... vii Megan E. Jenkins and Randy T Simmons Chapter 1 Resource Governance in the American West: Institutions, Information, and Incentives ............................................ 1 Peter J. Hill and Shawn Regan Chapter 2 Self-Governance, Polycentricity, and Environmental Policy................... 31 Jordan K. Lofthouse Chapter 3 Pacific Salmon Fisheries Management: An (Unusual) Example of Polycentric Governance Involving Indigenous Participation at Multiple Scales .......................... 61 Shane Day Chapter 4 Population Growth and the Governance of Complex Institutions: People Are More Than Mouths to Feed ............... 91 Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurmak Chapter 5 Contracting and the Commons: Linking the Insights of Gary Libecap and Elinor Ostrom ....................... 149 Eric C. Edwards and Bryan Leonard Chapter 6 The Environmental Benefits of Long-Distance Trade: Insights from the History of By-Product Development .........................
    [Show full text]
  • The End of Antitrust History Revisited
    BOOK REVIEW THE END OF ANTITRUST HISTORY REVISITED THE CURSE OF BIGNESS: ANTITRUST IN THE NEW GILDED AGE. By Tim Wu. New York, N.Y.: Columbia Global Reports. 2018. Pp. 154. $14.99. Reviewed by Lina M. Khan∗ INTRODUCTION In April 2007 the Antitrust Modernization Commission reported to Congress that “the state of the U.S. antitrust laws” was “sound.”1 Created by lawmakers to examine whether antitrust laws should be re- vised, the bipartisan Commission concluded that existing statutes were sufficiently flexible to address emerging issues, and that courts, antitrust agencies, and practitioners were now in proper agreement that “con- sumer welfare” was the “unifying goal of antitrust law.”2 A decade later, the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Section delivered a similar as- sessment, remarking that “the Nation’s system of competition enforce- ment has been in good hands.”3 These reports represented a high-water mark of agreement within the antitrust community that, despite ongoing debates about specific doctrinal tests or particular standards of proof, antitrust law was, altogether, on the right course. The fact that antitrust had shed its public appeal in favor of an expert-driven enterprise — becoming “less democratic and more technocratic”4 — was generally seen as further evidence of its success.5 ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ∗ Academic Fellow, Columbia Law School; Counsel, U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. This Review reflects my per- sonal views and not those of the Committee or any of its members. For insightful comments and conversations, I am grateful to Eleanor Fox, David Grewal, Lev Menand, John Newman, and Mar- shall Steinbaum.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 February 20, 2015 HAROLD DEMSETZ Arthur Andersen UCLA Alumni Emeritus Professor Emeritus Business Economics Address: Departmen
    February 20, 2015 HAROLD DEMSETZ Arthur Andersen UCLA Alumni Emeritus Professor Emeritus Business Economics Address: Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095. Telephones: Office: (2l3) 825-365l; Home: (818) 343-8743 Fax: 310-825-9528 (Departmental fax). Education Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois: Ph.D. and M.A. (Economics, l959); MBA (1954) University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois: B.S. (Economics, l953) Professional Employment Academic Emeritus Professor, UCLA 1994 University of California, Los Angeles, California. Professor, l97l to 1994. Arthur Andersen UCLA Alumni Chair in Business Economics, 1986 to 1995. Director, Economic/Business Program, l983 to 1995. Chairman, Economics Department, l978-l980. Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, 1960-1963. Senior Research Fellow, the Hoover Institution, l97l-l979; Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri Visiting Distinguished Professor, l982-l983. University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Associate to full Professor of Economics, Graduate School of Business and the Law School, l963-l97l; visiting Professor, 1990. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan Instructor to Assistant Professor, Economics Department, l958-l960. Non-academic Consultant to the RAND Corporation, l96l-l962. 1 Scientific Analyst for the Center for Naval Analyses, while on leave from U.C.L.A., l963. Consultant to General Motors, l974. Consultant to ARCO, l976-l985. Honorary Societies and Awards Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, received from Northwestern University 1994 Honorary Doctorate of Social Studies, received from Francisco Marraquinn University 1996 Listed in Great Economists Since Keynes, by Mark Blaugh, l983. Listed in Who=s Who in Economics, Who=s Who in America, Who's Who in the Social Sciences, Who's Who in the West and in other similar directories.
    [Show full text]
  • The Essential RONALD COASE
    The Essential RONALD COASE by L. Lynne Kiesling Fraser Institute d www.fraserinstitute.org The Essential Ronald Coase by L. Lynne Kiesling Fraser Institute www.fraserinstitute.org 2021 www.fraserinstitute.org d Fraser Institute d iii Copyright © 2021 by the Fraser Institute. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The author of this publication has worked independently and opinions expressed by her are, therefore, her own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Fraser Institute or its supporters, directors, or staff. This publication in no way implies that the Fraser Institute, its directors, or staff are in favour of, or oppose the passage of, any bill; or that they support or oppose any particular political party or candidate. Printed and bound in Canada Cover design and artwork Bill C. Ray ISBN 978-0-88975-644-1 Contents Introduction / 1 1 Institutions, Property Rights, and Transaction Costs / 5 2 Why Do Firms Exist? / 9 3 Resolving Disputes: The Problem of Social Cost / 19 4 Applied Transaction Cost Economics: Spectrum Allocation / 27 5 Applied Transaction Cost Economics: Emission Permit Trading / 33 6 Coase and the Lighthouse in Economics / 41 7 Problems of Monopoly / 45 8 Conclusion / 53 Works Cited and Suggestions for Further Reading / 55 Publishing information / 61 Author’s acknowledgments / 62 About the author / 62 Publisher’s acknowledgments / 62 Supporting the Fraser Institute / 63 Purpose, funding, and independence / 63 About the Fraser Institute / 64 Editorial Advisory Board / 65 Fraser Institute d www.fraserinstitute.org Introduction: Who Was Ronald Coase? Ronald Coase was one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and one of the most unusual.
    [Show full text]