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Date: | Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:29:54 -0500 |
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Good job, Altug. I agree with your interpretation of the theorem in
your chapter 1, although I did not read your entire book. There were
many who did not fall into Stigler's quicksand, however. My guess is
that most of them gave up trying to argue which interpretation is
correct and just got on with the task of applying the theorem, as you
presented it.
I am referring specifically to those who pursued the property rights
agenda suggested in Coase's paper. I noticed that your list of
references contained nothing on Harold Demsetz, whose work did more
to clarify the theorem than any other in my view. Your list does
contain several entries for Douglass North, however, so you
presumably realize Coase's influence on North. Noticeably absent also
was Furubotn and Pejovich's 1972 JEL paper on the broad scope of the
economic theory of property rights, to which Coase's article pointed.
There is also a large literature on institutions in which the best
writers appreciate that Coase's social cost paper and his theory of
the firm paper are complementary contributions to a new theory of
institutions and organization. You probably appreciate some of this
because I note your two references to Williamson.
Hopefully, the history of economic thought is more than a history
that can be represented by the mathematical idea of path dependence.
Pat Gunning
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