IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urnsici0932-4569(201512)1714_709creeue_2.0.tx_2-n.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coase Revisited: Economic Efficiency under Externalities, Transaction Costs, and Nonconvexity

Author

Listed:
  • Jean Paul Chavas

Abstract

This paper presents a general-equilibrium analysis of economic efficiency under externalities, transaction costs, and nonconvexity. It applies to market exchange as well as contractual arrangements. We show that the Coase theorem continues to hold under general conditions: The efficient management of externalities remains consistent with aggregate profit maximization under transaction costs and nonconvexity. We examine the role of transaction costs and explore how the minimization of transaction costs is an integral part of efficient allocations. We also show how our analysis applies under nonconvex technology, provided that we allow for nonlinear pricing in markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean Paul Chavas, 2015. "Coase Revisited: Economic Efficiency under Externalities, Transaction Costs, and Nonconvexity," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 171(4), pages 709-734, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201512)171:4_709:creeue_2.0.tx_2-n
    DOI: 10.1628/093245613X14363478578775
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/coase-revisited-economic-efficiency-under-externalities-transaction-costs-and-nonconvexity-101628093245615x14363478578775
    Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1628/093245613X14363478578775?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward Glaeser & Simon Johnson & Andrei Shleifer, 2001. "Coase Versus the Coasians," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 853-899.
    2. Stephanie Rosenkranz & Patrick W. Schmitz, 2007. "Can Coasean Bargaining Justify Pigouvian Taxation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 573-585, November.
    3. Ronald H. Coase, 2008. "The Institutional Structure of Production," Springer Books, in: Claude Ménard & Mary M. Shirley (ed.), Handbook of New Institutional Economics, chapter 2, pages 31-39, Springer.
    4. Bonnisseau, Jean-Marc & Cornet, Bernard, 1988. "Valuation equilibrium and pareto optimum in non-convex economies," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2-3), pages 293-308, April.
    5. Ivar Ekeland & James J. Heckman & Lars Nesheim, 2004. "Identification and Estimation of Hedonic Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages 60-109, February.
    6. Steven Tadelis & Oliver E.Williamson, 2012. "Transaction Cost Economics [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    7. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    8. Jean-Paul Chavas & Walter Briec, 2012. "On economic efficiency under non-convexity," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(3), pages 671-701, August.
    9. Brown, Donald J., 1991. "Equilibrium analysis with non-convex technologies," Handbook of Mathematical Economics, in: W. Hildenbrand & H. Sonnenschein (ed.), Handbook of Mathematical Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 36, pages 1963-1995, Elsevier.
    10. Alex Robson & Stergios Skaperdas, 2008. "Costly enforcement of property rights and the Coase theorem," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 36(1), pages 109-128, July.
    11. Kamiya Kazuya, 1995. "Optimal Public Utility Pricing: A General Equilibrium Analysis," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 548-572, August.
    12. Baumol, William J & Bradford, David F, 1972. "Detrimental Externalities and Non-Convexity of the Production Set," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 39(154), pages 160-176, May.
    13. A. M. Rubinov & X. X. Huang & X. Q. Yang, 2002. "The Zero Duality Gap Property and Lower Semicontinuity of the Perturbation Function," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 775-791, November.
    14. M. Ali Khan & Rajiv Vohra, 1987. "An Extension of the Second Welfare Theorem to Economies with Nonconvexities and Public Goods," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 223-241.
    15. Starrett, David A., 1972. "Fundamental nonconvexities in the theory of externalities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 180-199, April.
    16. repec:dau:papers:123456789/6486 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Acemoglu, Daron, 2003. "Why not a political Coase theorem? Social conflict, commitment, and politics," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 620-652, December.
    18. Deaton,Angus & Muellbauer,John, 1980. "Economics and Consumer Behavior," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521296762.
    19. Jean Tirole, 1999. "Incomplete Contracts: Where Do We Stand?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(4), pages 741-782, July.
    20. Glenn Fox, 2007. "The Real Coase Theorems," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 27(3), pages 373-396, Fall.
    21. Luenberger, David G., 1992. "Benefit functions and duality," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 461-481.
    22. Hahn, F H, 1971. "Equilibrium with Transaction Costs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(3), pages 417-439, May.
    23. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    24. Lee, Jihong & Sabourian, Hamid, 2007. "Coase theorem, complexity and transaction costs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 214-235, July.
    25. Guesnerie, Roger, 1975. "Pareto Optimality in Non-Convex Economies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 43(1), pages 1-29, January.
    26. Foley, Duncan K., 1970. "Economic equilibrium with costly marketing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 276-291, September.
    27. Aliprantis, Charalambos D. & Tourky, Rabee & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2001. "A Theory of Value with Non-linear Prices: Equilibrium Analysis beyond Vector Lattices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 22-72, September.
    28. David Starrett, 1973. "Inefficiency and the Demand for "Money" in a Sequence Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 40(4), pages 437-448.
    29. Luenberger, David G., 1995. "Externalities and benefits," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 159-177.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jean-Paul Chavas & Eleonora Matteazzi & Martina Menon & Federico Perali, 2021. "Bargaining in the Family," CHILD Working Papers Series 88 JEL Classification: D1, Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) - CCA.
    2. Jean-Paul Chavas & Eleonora Matteazzi & Martina Menon & Federico Perali, 2022. "(In)Efficient Bargaining in the Family," Working Papers 2, SITES.
    3. Aleksandar D. Slaev, 2023. "The Transaction Costs of Sustainability: Coase’s Proviso and the Roles of Environmentalists and the Government," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-18, February.
    4. Aldo Montesano, 2018. "A Dual Characterization of Pareto Optimality," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 4(1), pages 153-188, March.
    5. Chavas, Jean-Paul, 2017. "On food security and the economic valuation of food," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 58-67.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Steven G. Medema, 2020. "The Coase Theorem at Sixty," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1045-1128, December.
    2. Murty, Sushama, 2010. "Externalities and fundamental nonconvexities: A reconciliation of approaches to general equilibrium externality modeling and implications for decentralization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 331-353, January.
    3. Paul Oslington, 2012. "General Equilibrium: Theory and Evidence," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(282), pages 446-448, September.
    4. Jean-Paul Chavas & Walter Briec, 2012. "On economic efficiency under non-convexity," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(3), pages 671-701, August.
    5. W D A Bryant, 2009. "General Equilibrium:Theory and Evidence," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 6875, January.
    6. Élodie Bertrand, 2006. "La thèse d'efficience du « théorème de Coase ». Quelle critique de la microéconomie ?," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 57(5), pages 983-1007.
    7. Cropper, Maureen L & Oates, Wallace E, 1992. "Environmental Economics: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 675-740, June.
    8. Antonio Villar, 1994. "Existence and efficiency of equilibrium in economics with increasing returns to scale: an exposition," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 18(2), pages 205-243, May.
    9. Flam, S.D. & Jourani, A., 2000. "Prices and Pareto Optima," Norway; Department of Economics, University of Bergen 0800, Department of Economics, University of Bergen.
    10. Starr, Ross M., 1999. "Why is there Money? Convergence to a Monetary Equilibrium in a General Equilibrium Model with Transaction Costs," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt253553nn, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    11. Kerstens, Kristiaan & Mounir, Amine & de Woestyne, Ignace Van, 2011. "Non-parametric frontier estimates of mutual fund performance using C- and L-moments: Some specification tests," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 1190-1201, May.
    12. Starr, Ross M., 2002. "Existence of Uniqueness of "Money" in General Equilibrium: Natural Monopoly in the Most Liquid Asset," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt660465rm, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    13. Barbara Praetorius, 1996. "Nachfrageseitiges Marktversagen auf dem Energiemarkt: Empirische Evidenz, theoretische Aspekte, politische Folgerungen," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 65(2), pages 143-155.
    14. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2011. "Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 227-253, April.
    15. Vítor Gaspar, 2010. "Financial Stability and Policy Cooperation," Working Papers o201001, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    16. Łukasz Hardt, 2006. "Narodziny i ewolucja treści znaczeniowej wyrażenia „koszt transakcyjny”," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 11-12, pages 1-24.
    17. Cerin, Pontus, 2006. "Bringing economic opportunity into line with environmental influence: A discussion on the Coase theorem and the Porter and van der Linde hypothesis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 209-225, February.
    18. Djankov, Simeon & Glaeser, Edward & La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "The new comparative economics," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 595-619, December.
    19. Gaël Giraud & Cécile Renouard, 2011. "In search of an alternative to shareholder value maximization," Post-Print hal-00609153, HAL.
    20. Ross Starr, 2000. "Why is there Money? Convergence to a Monetary Equilibrium in a General Equilibrium Model with Transaction Costs," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0058, Econometric Society.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • B4 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology
    • D5 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics

    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:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201512)171:4_709:creeue_2.0.tx_2-n. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Thomas Wolpert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/jite .

    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.