Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Don't Fence Me In - Of Coase and Cattle



It is hard to read Robert C. Ellickson's 1986 article "Of Coase and Cattle" and not think of this song.

It is a pretty awesome article, by the way. Read it with a loved one, especially if the loved one is an economist, and enjoy a good argument about how idealized worlds where you can assume zero transaction costs do not exist, and so why do we even talk about that? And dude, informal norms are more powerful than formal law, and look, people do not behave rationally!

In other words, the perfect article for a sociologish (I do not deserve the -t) and economist odd-couple.