What did Coase teach in the classroom? Coase’s articles reprinted in The Firm, the Market, and the Law make up 4 of 11 articles assigned in Coase’s 1972 course on “Economic Analysis and Public Policy.” This article reconstructs Coase’s 1972 syllabus, describes Coase as a teacher,...

When policymakers are uncertain about the private costs of pollution abatement, using simple auctions that jointly determine the price and quantity of pollution permits enables them to set precisely the quantity of pollution they would choose if they knew abatement costs perfectly. Auctioning an...

This article provides a few of my enduring recollections of Professor Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013). Part of the paper uses the medium of poetry to communicate my emotions and reactions on first meeting Coase at a conference in 1991, and at another conference in 1997; the poem includes an Epilogue,...

Governments and international development agencies often fail in their efforts to build and reform property and company registries. They implement misguided policies rooted in a poor understanding of the role that registries play in the modern economy. This work aims to remedy this situation by...

Over the years, it has frequently been argued by economists that lighthouses need to be provided by the state. Ronald Coase demonstrated, in fact, that they could be provided privately. The same is true of financial regulation. Though many economists, using blackboard economics, argue that...

This paper argues that delivering free services is driven by a combination of motivations and explains how policy makers or other principals can exploit them to deal with underproduction of free services. We identify intrinsic motivation, respect and gratitude as main examples of underlying...