Download This PaperOn Coase and COVID-19
Allen, D.W.E, Berg, C., Davidson, S., Potts, J. (2022) 'On Coase and COVID-19', European Journal of Law and Economics.
19 Pages Posted: 26 Apr 2020 Last revised: 26 Apr 2022
Date Written: April 21, 2022
Abstract
From an epidemiological perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis. From an economic perspective, it is an externality and a social cost. Strikingly, almost all economic policy to address the infection externality has been formulated within a Pigovian analysis of implicit taxes and subsidies directed by a social planner drawing on social cost-benefit analysis. In this paper we examine the alternative economic methodology of the externality. We seek to understand how an exchange-focused and institutional analysis provides a better understanding of how to minimise social cost. Our Coasean framework allows us to further develop a comparative institutional analysis of the pandemic response.
Keywords: COVID-19, Coase theorem, externality
JEL Classification: D73, H23
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