Publication Number 2023-08
Publication Date: August 2023
This paper examines the evolving role played by the Coase theorem over the several editions of Richard Posner’s Economic Analysis of Law. In doing so, the paper shows both the grounding of Posner’s efficiency norm in the theorem’s logic and his increasing emphasis on the theorem’s invariance claim as its key feature. While Posner’s analysis in the book relies increasingly on the Coase theorem over time, its role became much more that of a thought construct, or benchmark for legal reasoning, than an operational proposition about legal adjudication.
