What do cattle and bees tell us about the Coase theorem?

• Autores: Elodie Bertrand
• Localización: European journal of law and economics, ISSN 0929-1261, Vol. 31, Nº 1, 2011, págs. 39-62
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Two empirical studies on well-known externalities seem to confirm Coase’s (J Law Econ 17(2):357–376, 1960) insight, according to which transactions on property rights will occur if their gains are greater than their costs. However, the trespassing cattle case (Ellickson in, Stanford Law Rev 38(3): 623–687, 1986) shows that neighbours do not refer to legal entitlements and settle their disputes without monetary transaction, which may be due, according to us, to other impediments to bargaining than transaction costs: some social norms prevent the market from developing. Such a market exists in the pollinating bees case (Cheung in, J Law Econ 16(1): 11–33, 1973), but we show that, if transactions over ‘externalities’ are facilitated, other externalities, which remain at its borders, are also handled with social norms. Both studies contribute to an institutional description of the functioning of a market over rights or of its impediments.