Firm Market Law by Ronald Coase (1 results)

Condition: UNSPECIFIED. First edition, first printing. 8vo. v, [1], 217, [1] pp. Original black cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, dust jacket. Ownership inscription to front free endpaper, in all other respects a very fine copy. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press. A collection bringing together some of Coase's most significant writings, including his two classic articles 'The Nature of the Firm' (1937) and 'The Problem of Social Cost' (1960), the two works cited by the Royal Swedish Academy in awarding Coase the Nobel Prize in 1991. In 'The Nature of the Firm', ?Coase set out to explain why firms exist and what determines the extent of a firm's activities. He found the answer in a concept to which most economists had until recently paid scant attention ? transaction costs. Coase suggested that we tend to see firms emerge when the cost of internal organisation is lower than the cost of transacting in the market, and that the limit of a firm?s activities (or, the extent of internal organisation) comes at the point where the cost of organising another transaction internally exceeds the cost of transacting through the market? (New Palgrave). 'The Problem of Social Cost', ?one of the most cited articles in all of the economics and legal literatures?, is Coase's attempt to demolish Pigou's famous analysis of social cost theory and the source of the famous Coase theorem ?which says that when transaction costs are zero and rights are fully specified, parties to a dispute will bargain to an efficient outcome, regardless of the initial assignment of rights. But Coase recognised that the transaction costs are pervasive and will generally preclude the working of this bargaining mechanism. Coase thus concludes that legal decision-makers should assign rights so as to maximise the value of output in society? (New Palgrave).