Coasean Economics Law and Economics and the New Institutional Economics
[Book]
edited by Steven G. Medema.
Dordrecht
Springer Netherlands
1998
(xiii, 274 pages)
Recent economic thought series, 60.
1 Transaction Costs, Production Costs, and the Passage of Time --; 2 The Coasean Tangle: The Nature of the Firm and the Problem of Historical Specificity --; 3 The Three Great Puzzles of the Firm --; 4 The Cost of Accosting Coase: A Reconciliatory Survey of Proofs and Disproofs of the Coase Theorem --; 5 The Coase Theorem and Some Puzzles on the Tort/Contract Boundary --; 6 Property Rights, Transaction Costs, and Coase: One More Time --; 7 Revisiting Legal Realism: The Law, Economics, and Organization Perspective --; 8 Ronald Coase on Economic Policy Analysis: Framework and Implications --; 9 Ronald's Way --; 10 Coase, Communism and the "Black Box" of Soviet-Type Economies --; 11 Ronald Coase, the British Tradition, and the Future of Economic Method --; 12 The Good Old Coase Theorem and the Good Old Chicago School: A Comment on Zerbe and Medema --; 13 The Problem of Social Coase: Between Regulation and Free Market In Economic Methodology.
This collection assesses the development of `Coasean Economics' - those aspects of economic analysis that have evolved out of the ground-breaking work of Ronald Coase. Two major strands of research can be identified here: law and economics and the New Institutional Economics. While both law and economics and the analysis of institutions by no means originated with or evolved solely from Coase's work, it is undeniable that his contributions, particularly in The Nature of the Firm and The Problem of Social Cost, played a major role in shaping the contemporary manifestations of these areas of inquiry. This volume focuses on the firm, the Coase theorem, and law and economics - those aspects of economic analysis with which Coase is most closely identified. Along with these come several essays on methodology and one on transitional economies, all against the underlying background of Coase's contributions and influence, and the implications of these for how we do economics. Taken together, this volume offers a unique perspective on `Coasean Economics' as well as on the potential future direction of economic analysis.