One of my intellectual heroes is the English economist Ronald Coase. More specifically, a large chunk of my scholarly work can be traced back to two of his landmark papers: The Federal Communications Commission (1959) and The Problem of Social Cost (1960). I wrote my first “Coase paper” in the summer of 2004 — though I did not get around to publishing it until 2010 (see item #10 below) — and have since published nine more papers extending Coase’s ideas to many different domains:

1. Outer Space Auctions? (2023/2024). This paper presents a Coasian solution to the problem of space congestion and orbital debris in Low Earth Orbit.
2. Coase’s parable (2023). This paper explores the origins of Coase’s idea of reciprocal harms.
3. Coase and the Corleones (2022). This book chapter extends Coase’s idea of reciprocal harms in the context to the famous wedding scene in the original Godfather movie.
4. Of Coase and Copyrights: The Law and Economics of Literary Fan Art (2020).
5. Does the Prisoners Dilemma Refute the Coase Theorem? (with Orlando I. Martinez Garcia, 2014). This paper extends the Coase theorem to the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
6. Trolley Problems (2014). This paper presents a Coasian solution to the trolley problem.
7. Modelling the Coase Theorem (2012). This paper formalizes the logic of the Coase Theorem.
8. Clones and the Coase Theorem (2011). This paper extends Coase’s idea of reciprocal harms to the conflict in the original Blade Runner film.
9. Coase and the Constitution (2011). This paper proposes the creation of “federalism markets” in which governmental powers and functions would be allocated to Congress, the states, or even private firms through decentralized auction mechanisms and secondary markets.
10. Coase’s Paradigm (2010). I wrote this homage to Coase during the summer of 2004 but did not get around to publishing it until six years later!