Do Coasian Solutions Work in Real Life?

One of my students from the Graduate Certificate in Public Policy – Satish Terala (@satisficed– wrote a rejoinder to my Pragati blog post on why I should get compensated by my neighbour who is building a house. While he is sympathetic to my cause, he believes that the trade will not actually takes place. His post follows:


Anupam Manur in his post “Dealing With Construction in Your Neighborhood” sets up an interesting problem – construction activity in his neighbourhood undertaken by his neighbour is disturbing the peace and tranquility of his life. Anupam then rightly concludes that his neighbour’s actions are imposing a negative externality on him (actually the entire neighbourhood) and then invokes the Coase Theorem to solve for it. The solution would involve the offending party (his neighbour) paying Anupam a certain amount. Anupam would then promptly buy a new pair of heavy duty earbuds, soundproofs his house and perhaps gets some extra cleaning help.

Sounds simple enough. But why did that not happen in this case. I would surmise that getting his neighbour to understand the economics of externalities and Coase theorem is still not going to help matters here. Why is it that then perfectly rational actors fail to trade even when there are gains to be had by doing so. The answer to this comes from another equally important but not as famous theorem called the Myerson-Satterthwaite theorem.

In presence of private information about the value of certain good (Anupam’s peace and tranquility) to the buyer and the seller, Myerson-Satterthwaite theorem says that no mechanism exists that guarantees that a trade will always happen. The problem here is that of information-asymmetry. In a Coasian world, all information about the externality is public and bargaining will ensure that an efficient outcome for both parties is reached.

In Myerson-Satterthwaite’s world, people’s valuation of the good are private i.e. the buyer only has a vague sense of the what the seller is willing to accept and similarly the seller only has a notion of what the buyer is willing to pay (for the math inclined: buyers view of sellers cost is uniformly distributed on the interval [0,1] and vice versa). This private information induces sellers to act as if the costs of their goods are higher than they actually are and similarly for the buyer to act as if good is of lesser value than their private valuation of it. The theorem then shows that the gains of trade are not sufficient enough for either of the players to honestly reveal their costs and values. This implies that no fool proof mechanism can be designed that guarantees a trade will happen even when there is a price that would be agreeable to both parties.

Turns out that worst case scenario is the case of a single buyer and a single seller. As the number of buyers and sellers increase, these informational problems disappear and markets become ‘efficient’.

So Anupam might then just be better off buying those heavy-duty earbuds himself; Coase is not going to help him much in this case.

Note: While I highlight only the applicability of M-S theorem in case bargaining does occur, there are many other reasons why bargaining might not even occur. Social norms, inability to assign the responsibility of the externality, hold out problems and other issues often have large transaction costs dissuading the participants from even bargaining in the first place.

Satish is a technology professional based out of Boston. He has degrees from UC Berkeley and University of Toronto in ‘doing marginally useful things’. He still hopes to finish his GCPP – some day.

Dealing With Construction in Your Neighbourhood

Dealing with construction activity near your place is a real pain. There’s a house that is being constructed right opposite my place and it is alarming how much it has disrupted my life. My productivity and peace of mind has been severely affected. This is a perfect example of negative externality, where a third-person (me) is affected by a transaction of which he is not a part.

The construction noise, from digging the borewell to cement mixers, have made it impossible for me to work from home. I find it hard to think about regulating platform economies or give a webinar while a guy outside my place is hammering on iron. That adds a couple of hours of travel to work and back.  Then, there’s the problem of fine dust that is deposited in all corners of my house. I have to either pay extra to the domestic help or spend a couple of hours to clean it myself. Not to mention, the added health risk of inhaling the particulate matter. All of these presents a real cost to the neighbours of a house that’s newly constructed.

The externality presents a market failure. The price of a house (whether it is rent or the cost of production) does not include the damage/suffering caused to others who will not benefit from that house construction. How do you solve for this  externality?

Most people would silently go through the suffering with minor complaints made to the owner and a lot of internal whining. Very few would have the power to stop the construction or put significant hurdles in the way, so as to increase the project timelines. Neither of it is an efficient solution. The owner has a right to construct a house on a plot of land that he has purchased and the neighbours have a right to peace and quiet and a right to expect their house not to get inundated by cement dust.

The only solution seems to be a Coasian solution. The owner can pay an amount to compensate for the damage caused to the neighbours and carry on with the construction activities. The externality will be internalised this way. The receivers of the payment can use the money to hire cleaners, install an air purifier, or invest in sound proofing. The additional payment gets added to the cost of construction, which can be passed on to the eventual occupiers of the space. The rent can be slightly higher to reflect this charge or if the owners decide to stay there themselves, they will bear the cost over many years that they live there.

Now, I’m off to find the owner and give him a lesson on Coasian solutions to externality and try extract compensation payments.