Una conversación con Ronald H. Coase

Esta entrevista con Ronald Coase es excelente. Hay varios aspectos interesantes. Uno, por ejemplo, es la razón por la que el correo ha sido tradicionalmente un monopolio estatal. Ronald Coase estudió el caso en Inglaterra y concluyó que eso se debe a que ese mecanismo (dominio estatal) le permitía al Estado vigilar y reducir posibles secesiones. Lo que por supuesto me recordó los argumentos de James Scott en su excelente libro Seen Like a State sobre el origen del orden cuadricular de las calles en ciudades y los apellidos, ambos originalmente mecanismos de control, para, entre otras cosas, recaudar impuestos. Las últimas palabras de Coase en el video son fenomenales. 

Coase finaliza con unas palabras para economistas, y dice que deben de salir a la calle identificar un problema real y entenderlo, lo que obviamente puede tener implicaciones importantes de política. 

Kindergarten Coase

In a world where bargaining can occur without any costs or effort, voluntary bargains between individuals lead society to the best possible outcome. When there are disputes between parties in this easy-bargaining world, government involvement can change the relative bargaining strength of the disputing parties, but not the ultimate outcome for society; the bargaining process will pick up where the government leaves off and continue along the same path as before until society reaches its ideal destination. 

The article, by Jeremy Kidd (March 2014), is here. HT: Mostly Economics. 

Coase

In "The Lighthouse in Economics" (Coase, 1974) Coase wondered about the extent to which traditionally defined public goods really constitute a market failure. The lighthouse had appeared frequently in the economics literature as a public good that needed to be supplied by the government. However, Coase observed, privately owned lighthouses existed and were typically supported by a harbor tax or equivalent assessment against the vessels that benefitted from them. The real problem was in coming up with an appropriate pricing mechanism and accounting for free riders -- in particular, boats that might pass without actually using the harbor, thus benefitting from the lighthouse without having to pay the tax. Later critics observed, however, that private lighthouses either did not exist at all or else were short-lived relatively unsuccessful ventures. (Bertrand, 2006; Barnett & Block, 2007).

That is from a short and interesting paper on Coase's life and contributions by Herbert J. Hovenkamp.

Classic article of the day

I reread Coase's "The Nature of the Firm" (1937) this afternoon. The basic questions Coase asked are: 1) What is a firm? 2) Why do we in some cases use the price mechanism but in others the entrepreneur to allocate resources? Ronald Coase's genius was to ask apparently simple questions and to propose original answers: there is a cost of using the price mechanism. The entrepreneur and the price system are substitutes. 

[a lot has been said since then].

[There is no math in the paper . . . economics, in general, has changed a lot since then . . .]. 

Would an article like that one be published today in a major economic journals? Probably not. 

Have you wonder what kind of "basic questions" are out there that can be addressed using a Coase-type approach . . . (?)