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The Coase theorem is one of the most influential and controversial ideas to emerge from post–World War II economics. This article examines the theorem’s origins, diffusion, and the wide variety of uses to which it has been put by economists and others over the sixty years since Coase published “The Problem of Social Cost.” Along the way, we explore the ambiguity and controversy surrounding the theorem, develop a Coase theorem that is valid as a proposition in economic logic, and probe the implications of all of this for the use of the Coase theorem going forward.

In the beginning there were stories. People think in stories, or at least I do. My research in the field now known as behavioral economics started from real life stories I observed while I was a graduate student at the University of Rochester. Economists often sneer at “anecdotal data” and I had less than that—a collection of anecdotes without a hint of data. Yet, each story captured something about human behavior that seemed inconsistent with the economic theory I was struggling to master in graduate school. Behavioral economics has come a long way from my initial set of stories. The current generation of behavioral economists are using all the modern tools of economics, from theory to big data to structural models to neuroscience, and they are applying those tools to most of the domains in which economists practice their craft. This is crucial to making descriptive economics more accurate.

A sweeping account of the rise and evolution of liberal internationalism in the modern era For two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism's long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today's fractured political moment. Creating an international \"space\" for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence-these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism-reformed and reimagined-remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.

The economics of religion is a relatively new field of research in economics. This survey serves two purposes—it is backward-looking in that it traces the historical and sociological ongins of this field, and it is forward-looking in that it examines the insights and research themes that are offered by economists to investigate religion globally in the modern world. Several factors have influenced the economics of religion: (1) new developments in theoretical models including spatial models of religious markets and evolutionary models of religious traits; (2) empirical work that addresses innovatively econometnc identification in examining causal influences on religious behavior; (3) new research in the economic history of religion that considers religion as an independent, rather than a dependent, vanable; and (4) more studies of religion outside the Western world. Based on these developments, this paper discusses four themes—first, seculanzation, pluralism, regulation, and economic growth; second, religious markets, club goods, differentiated products, and networks; third, identification including secular competition and chantable giving; and fourth, conflict and cooperation in developing societies. In reviewing this paradoxically ancient yet burgeoning field, this paper puts forward unanswered questions for scholars of the economics of religion to reflect upon in years to come.

We discuss Yair Mundlak's (1927–2015) contribution to econometrics through the lens of the fixed effects estimator. We set the stage by discussing Mundlak's life and his seminal 1961 article in the Journal of Farm Economics, showing how it was looking at the right application—the study of agricultural productivity, which had hitherto been thought to be marred by the presence of management bias—that led Mundlak to use the fixed effects estimator. After discussing Mundlak's contribution, we briefly discuss the historical economic and statistical contexts in which he made that contribution. We then highlight the dialogue that took place between the proponents of fixed versus random effects and discuss how Mundlak settled the debate in his 1978 Econometrica article. We conclude by discussing how, between fixed and random effects, the fixed effects estimator won the day, becoming the de facto estimator of choice among applied economists because of the Credibility Revolution, culminating in the popularity nowadays of difference-in-differences designs and of two-way fixed effects estimators.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.