Private property and social costs

This article discusses the widely cherished theme of property rights and externalities, surveying the legal and economic literature that developed around Coase's 1960 article, The Problem of Social Cost. It identifies and appraises the most notable attacks to the Coase theorem and offers an insightful examination of the state of legal and economic scholarship in the wake of Coase's postulate. In revisiting familiar passages, this article shows the pervasive methodological implications of the Coasian approach to property rights and examines the normative and practical significance of the Coasian analysis in various situations of alleged market failure.