LAW AND ECONOMICS AND THE COASE THEOREM. A VIEW FROM COASE'S PAPERS AND CORRESPONDENCE

It is well known that at least two research programs in law and economics have emerged from Chicago in the second half of the twentieth century, economic analysis of law and neo-institutional economics. Both have in common the works of Coase and the famous article on "The Problem of Social Cost" published in 1960. By studying Coase's personal papers now available at the Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Center for Special Collections, we try to better characterizing the main purposes of Coase on law and economics and to show how his research agenda was clearly different from his colleagues at Chicago. We focus on the Coase theorem. This is a first step to better understand how law and economics has then been developed in Europe.