Dear all,
Next week, on February 18th,  Steven Medema will be presenting at the HPPE seminar on the topic “The World(s) in the Model(s): The Coase Theorem in the Long Run".
Please note that the seminar will take place exceptionally on Tuesday, in room KSW.1.04 (at the London School of Economics) and at 12 pm.

Abstract:
The 1970s was in many ways the heyday of controversy over the Coase theorem and also the period during which economists first began to subject Coase’s negotiation result to formal modeling. The present paper focuses on one thread in this literature--the debate over the effects of entry on the theorem’s long-run validity. This debate represents an important moment in Coase theorem history for reasons that go well beyond the basic question of the theorem’s correctness. First, this debate was tightly linked to the defense of the Pigovian tradition, as the models employed could easily be used to contrast the negotiated solutions of the Coase theorem variety with the results reached via a Pigovian tax. Second, the entry debate nicely illustrates how the Coase theorem discussion moved from the simple, intuitive analytics utilized by Coase to one couched in highly sophisticated (for the day) mathematical formalism. Third, the debate shows how the larger tendency in this formalistic turn to loose economic analysis from the institutional context—here, the law—and economists’ ignorance of relevant institutional features influenced the conclusions reached. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly in a historical sense, this case study reveals how the context within which the Coase theorem was embedded and, indeed, the nature of the theorem itself, was transformed through the focus on the world in the model. Finally, the analysis illustrates how the professional conception of the ‘Coase theorem’ had failed to stabilize by the end of the 1970s and how the alternative modeling strategies contributed to this.

About the presenter:
Steven G. Medema is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado Denver. His research focuses on the history of twentieth-century economics, and he is the author of more than 100 books and articles dealing with various aspects of the history of economics, law and economics, and public economics. His latest book, The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas (Princeton, 2009), was awarded the 2010 ESHET Book Prize. Dr. Medema served as Editor of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought from 1999-2008 and is a member of the editorial boards of several history of economics journals. He was elected President of the History of Economics Society for 2009-10. He currently serves as the Vice President of ESHET and was a member of the ESHET Scientific Council from 2000-2006.

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