Coase on China: Property rights and transaction costs revisited

• Main Author: Pedro Schwartz
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 2015-01-01
• Series: Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought
• Subjects: Teorema de Coase; costes de transacción; efectos distributivos de las reformas; experiencia económica china
• Online Access: http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/IJHE/article/view/47727

The Coase theorem is usually presented in a reduced form that makes the questionable assumption that transaction costs can be zero. It also overlooks the effects of sharing the benefit obtained by cooperative agreements. Actually, in post-Mao China Coase’s theorem unexpectedly worked in the most fluid of situation although property rights were in the making and benefits accrued were large. The experience of Chinese capitalism demands a recasting of the Coase theorem to make it less static and more powerful than it appears in the usual static reduce form.