Ronald Coase had an enormous impact on law and economics. Most law students encounter his work through the "Coase Theorem" from The Problem of Social Cost. This theorem holds that in the absence of transaction costs parties will bargain to an efficient allocation of rights even in the presence of externalities. I like to remember him for The Nature of the Firm, an essay he published in 1937 about why business organizations exist in addition to markets. This essay had little impact for decades before finally becoming a classic, giving hope to every scholar whose best work has been overlooked.
The enormity of Coase's legacy has translated into the common use of adjectives using his name. However, I regularly see different versions of it--Coasean, Coasian, even Coaseian. I found two different spellings in my own draft article, which led me to post this twitter poll:
Which of the following is correct?
— Robert Anderson (@ProfRobAnderson) January 22, 2019
I'm not the only one to wonder about this, as the following first footnote shows:
A little sleuthing on Google Scholar, however, made it clear that this is a disciplinary divide. Law reviews tend to favor Coasean, while economics and other journals tend to favor Coasian. Coaseian is a distant third in all journals, but not unheard of. I even found this forthcoming law review article which had all three versions in it. It will be interesting to see whether the editors conform those Coas(e)(i)an references.
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