Regarding this problem of simplification by Stigler and later textbooks mentioned by several folks, I think that this is a problem inherent in the nature of property rights and transactions costs. I think that Coase was less clear about this in his 1937 paper, where he laid out the initial idea of a firm choosing the scope of its property control in order to minimize transactions costs, but is more evident in his more complicated 1960 paper. It also becomes much clearer in the work of Coase's follower, Oliver Williamson, now the most cited economist of all time, according to Geoffrey Hodgson, whose oeuvre has been overwhelmingly dedicated to analyzing the many sub-categories and varieties of transactions costs and how they interact with property rights. In his awareness of these complications he long cited the old institutionalist, John R. Commons, even as some new institutionalists at Chicago derided Commons for his reputed "socialist" tendencies. The problem is that neither "transactions costs" nor "property rights" are nearly as clear cut as the textbooks would have it. Both involve many sub-categories and contingencies and varieties. The term transactions costs was used so broadly that it came to mean almost anything that was not a direct production cost, thereby nearly emptying it of real meaning. This is what has fed Williamson's long research agenda, to straighten out this mess. As for property rights, they are not absolute. They have many aspects: rights to receive income from, rights to alter, rights to change the use of, rights to resell, and on and on. Many of these are limited in arbitrary ways by laws and regulations, think of zoning and real estate. It is the complications of these concepts and how they interact that becomes much more the story and modifies it considerably in real practice. Again, I think that both Coase and Williamson are aware of these complications, even as they disappear in many textbook presentations. Barkley Rosser