IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ratsoc/v7y1995i3p321-327.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Uncertain Property Rights and the Coase Theorem

Author

Listed:
  • MAURICE SCHIFF

    (The World Bank)

Abstract

The Coase theorem states that, in the absence of transaction costs, the assignment of property rights does not affect resource allocation, and the allocation is Pareto optimal. The theorem also implies that the order in which parties settle in a given location does not affect resource allocation either. This article argues that Pareto optimality is not attained in a class of prevalent cases involving uncertain rights, risk aversion, and resource divisibility. Resolution of the uncertainty results in a Pareto improvement for all parties and in a different allocation of resources if wealth effects are significant. Further, the article argues that the order in which parties settle in a given location may affect resource allocation.

Suggested Citation

  • Maurice Schiff, 1995. "Uncertain Property Rights and the Coase Theorem," Rationality and Society, , vol. 7(3), pages 321-327, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:7:y:1995:i:3:p:321-327
    DOI: 10.1177/1043463195007003005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463195007003005
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1043463195007003005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthew W. McCarter & Shirli Kopelman & Thomas A. Turk & Candace E. Ybarra, 2012. "Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: How the tragedy of the anticommons emerges in organizations," Working Papers 12-14, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    2. E. Guzzini & A. Palestrini, 2012. "Coase theorem and exchangeable rights in non-cooperative games," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 83-100, February.
    3. Patrick Schmitz, 2001. "The Coase Theorem, Private Information, and the Benefits of Not Assigning Property Rights," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 23-28, January.
    4. Piacquadio Paolo G. & Di Bartolomeo Giovanni & Acocella Nicola, 2009. "A simple framework for investigating the properties of policy games," wp.comunite 0059, Department of Communication, University of Teramo.
    5. Steven G. Medema, 2020. "The Coase Theorem at Sixty," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1045-1128, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:7:y:1995:i:3:p:321-327. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.