The principle of institutional direction: Coase's regulatory critique of intervention

That Coase's political convictions changed from an early socialismto a later neo-liberalism stands in apparent contrast to thetheoretical consistency of his early (‘The Nature of theFirm’) and later (‘The Problem of Social Cost’)contributions to economics. Offering further evidence abouthis early views in particular, this paper takes a fresh lookat Coase's views on competition and antitrust to show that heconsistently stressed the role of what we shall call the principleof ‘institutional direction’, and that this principleinvolves an important criticism of both neo-liberal and socialistviews on regulation and state intervention.     

China's emerging market for property rights: Theoretical and empirical perspectives1

his paper contrasts state–directed and market–mediated reform of enterprise ownership rights in transition economies. We evaluate China's emerging market for enterprise ownership rights from the perspective of conditions underpinning the Coase Theorem: the assignment of property rights, the degree of competition, and the nature of transaction costs. China's recent experience suggests that policies designed to expand and support the scope of decentralized, market–based restructuring of ownership rights, even under conditions that deviate widely from the ideal assumptions underlying the Coase Theorem, may prove more beneficial than direct official intervention. JEL classification: G34, K11, L1 and P3.     

Intertemporal price–quality discrimination and the Coase conjecture

We examine time-consistent intertemporal price–quality discrimination by a durable goods monopolist, when there are a continuum of buyer demand-intensities with respect to product quality, and it is profitable for the monopolist to trade with the marginal buyer-type (i.e., the “gap” case). We show that along every subgame perfect equilibrium path, with probability 1, prices and qualities decline over time, and the market is completely and monotonically depleted according to buyer-type in a finite number of offers. But, unlike the fixed quality literature, the monopolist may randomize over price–quality offers along the equilibrium path. We also show that the Coase conjecture continues to be valid here, but in a form that is significantly different from the usual formulation. In the limit, as the time between offers evaporates, the monopolist makes a continuum of offers and perfectly screens the market. However, he effectively cannot price-discriminate, because the equilibrium profits converge to the complete “pooling” profits that would be made if the entire market had the marginal buyer-type’s valuation.     

自由交易能否实现资源最优配置：科斯中性定理的逻辑缺陷审视

科斯中性定理为新古典自由主义经济学所崇尚的基于帕累托改进的自由交换提供了理论支持,但无论是在实践应用上还是理论逻辑上,科斯中性定理本身却存在明显的缺陷。主要体现为：（1）它主要满足于存在两个当事者时的逻辑分析,而没有考虑多人交易中存在的核配置困境;（2）它没有考虑交易各方的交易能力,这涉及交易的可行性问题;（3）它还没有考虑当事者偏好的环境依赖性,这涉及交易的意愿性问题。事实上,如果考虑到因财富差异造成的交易能力差异,那么,在一个交易成本为零并可以自由交易的社会中,初始产权界定给穷人将会产生更高的资源配置效率,显然,这是对科斯中性定理的革命。通过对科斯中性定理中逻辑缺陷的剖析,也就揭示了自发市场秩序在扩展中的基础性障碍。     

Costly enforcement of property rights and the Coase theorem

We examine a setting in which property rights are initially ambiguously defined. Whether the parties go to court to remove the ambiguity or bargain and settle before or after trial, they incur enforcement costs. When the parties bargain, a version of the Coase theorem holds. However, despite the additional costs of going to court, other ex-post inefficiencies, and the absence of incomplete information, going to court may ex-ante Pareto dominate settling out of court. This is especially true in dynamic settings, where obtaining a court decision today saves on future enforcement costs. When the parties do not negotiate and go to court, a simple rule for the initial ambiguous assignment of property rights maximizes net surplus. A paper circulated under the same title and dated 6 March 2000 contained the basic structure examined in this paper, but did not develop many of the results reported here. For comments, we would like to thank participants at the WZB-CEPR contests conference and seminar audiences at the University of Southern California, the University of British Columbia, UC Davis, and UC Riverside.     

论科斯定理的真理性

科斯定理具有隐含的私有产权制度偏好。在逻辑意义上,对科斯定理中"交易成本"、"可交易权利的初始配置"、"最终配置"作特定的理解,科斯定理在西方主流经济学逻辑、方法论意义上是正确的,但此时科斯定理完全等价于完全竞争理论,没有任何现实意义。在经验意义上,科斯定理是谬误。科斯定理的逻辑推论必然是私有产权企业比公有产权企业更有效率。在经济实践中,存在着三类证据:完全肯定科斯定理、完全否定科斯定理以及在肯定科斯定理的同时包含着否定科斯定理的成分。"超产权论"是对科斯定理的"革命",是对科斯定理的否定。     

Coase Theorem Is Truth or Not？

Coase theorem has the implicit private property right system preference. In the logic sense, if we define “exchange cost”, “exchange right＇s initial allocation” and “final allocation” specially, Coase theorem will be correct in the sense of main - stream western economics logic and methodology, but Coase theorem is equal to perfect competition theory at all at the same time, it has no reality sense. In the empirical sense, Coase theorem is fallacious. A lot of economists including Paul A. Samuelson and Joseph E. Stiglitz have given Coase theorem radically negative comment. Coase theorem＇ s inference must be private property fight firm＇ s efficiency is higher than commonality property right firm＇ s. There are three kinds of evidence in the economic practice, one affirms Coase theorem absolutely, one denies Coase theorem at all, the other contains component denying Coase theorem while it affirms Coase theorem. The post property - right argument is evolution and negation of Coase theorem to a certain extent.     

科斯《企业的性质》之质疑

企业是资源所有者的取得更多的收益而建立起来的经济组织，交易成本的存在并不是企业存在的根本原因，科斯将企业定义为不同于价格调节机制的企业家计划调节机制，源于其错将企业计划混同于计划经济，事实上，企业是以市场合约为基础形成的，按市场运行原则运作的市场性组织，其资源配置并不独立于市场价格机制之外，价格调节机制与企业家调节机制是不可分割的两个方面，任何企业作为市场参与者与市场都是互动的。     

科斯定理在水资源保护中的应用

我国在经济实力不断提高的同时，生态环境却不断的遭到破坏，即存在恶化现象。在水资源方面，水污染非常突出。目前，我国七大水系中近一半的河段污染严重，湖泊中太湖、巢湖、滇池尤为突出；50％以上的城市地下水受到污染；500多条主要河流和湖泊受污染面积达到82％以上。全国有7亿人口饮用大肠杆菌超标水，约1．7亿人饮用被有机体污染的水。水环境保护因此受到重视。本文利用科斯定理的理论逻辑，提出水环境保护应首先建立水权及其交易制度，并充分发挥政府制度在其中的监督引导作用。     

Status Quo Bias in Bargaining: An Extension of the Myerson-Satterthwaite Theorem with an Application to the Coase Theorem

We generalize the Myerson-Satterthwaite theorem to study inefficiencies in bilateral bargaining over a divisible good, with two-sided private information on the valuations. For concave quasi-linear preferences, the ex ante most efficient Bayes equilibrium of any mechanism always exhibits a bias toward the status quo. If utility functions are quadratic every Bayes equilibrium is ex post inefficient, with the expected amount of trade biased toward the disagreement point. In other words, for the class of preferences we study, there is a strategic advantage to property rights in the Coase bargaining setup in the presence of incomplete information. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C78, D23, D62, D82.