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Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the extension of transaction costs to appropriative activity and coercive power in the property rights approach. It has been argued that including the costs of appropriation and violent enforcement in transaction costs is based on the assumption that Coaseian bargaining can be extended to any institutional scenario, i.e., voluntary as well as coercive exchange. However, voluntary transactions cannot capture the logic of coercive power. This means that the assumption of an efficient political market is not valid, and that the “political Coase theorem” lacks the logical consistency to provide a cornerstone for political theory.

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    Mehrdad Vahabi

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Vahabi, M. Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey. Public Choice 147, 227–253 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-010-9721-7

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