By many measures, Ronald Coase has been among the most influential economists of the past 60 years. Why is this so? We suggest that Coase’s work has enduring appeal to and insight for social scientists in part because it addresses the biggest and most important social problems: How do we solve...

Recent years have seen the development of new theories of market failure based on asymmetric information and network effects. According to the new paradigm, we can expect substantial failure in the markets for labor, credit, insurance, software, new technologies and even used cars, to give but a...