The hottest Transaction Costs Substack posts right now

Harms like pollution are the result of choices by both the emitter and the harmed, so assigning blame or charging only one side only works if that side is actually the cheapest to prevent the harm.
When bargaining is cheap and property rights are clear, people will make deals that reach the efficient outcome without needing taxes or heavy regulation, so who legally has the right mainly affects who pays.
In the real world bargaining often fails because negotiations are costly, many people are involved, or holdouts occur, so the right legal response depends on those transaction costs rather than a fixed preference for taxes or regulation.

Transaction costs fall as the number of buyers and sellers rises, because alternatives and past transactions narrow bargaining ranges and reduce holdouts. As a result, firms are more likely to produce an input in-house when there are few outside providers.
How hard it is to monitor workers helps determine firm size: tasks with easily measured effort or output (like assembly-line work) allow large firms with few managers, while hard-to-measure work (like teaching or legal services) leads to smaller firms and more market contracting.
Economic theory needs to take positive transaction costs seriously, since when those costs exist the design of law and institutions strongly shapes economic performance. Models that assume zero transaction costs miss important real-world effects and should be rebuilt around transaction costs.

DeFi has the potential to revolutionize traditional finance by creating a more open and accessible financial ecosystem.
To address security concerns, Concordium offers privacy-enhancing features to protect user identities.
Concordium tackles scalability issues by implementing a unique architecture that ensures high throughput and efficiency.

Asset specificity plays a key role in determining firm boundaries and decisions on vertical integration or contracting out.
The consideration of asset specific costs and transaction costs affects the make-or-buy decision for firms.
Using existing assets can be a cost-effective solution for firms, reducing the need for specialized assets and influencing decisions on vertical integration.

Markets don't fail, they fail to exist.
Coase's focus on transaction costs and property rights revolutionized thinking about market failure.
Reducing transaction costs and clarifying property rights can enable decentralized solutions to market failures.

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The UCLA brand of price theory focuses on transactions instead of just markets. This means they look closely at the details of how transactions happen and what impacts those processes.
Transaction costs are key to understanding decision-making in economics. Knowing how transaction costs affect choices helps explain why some actions happen within firms and others happen between them.
Property rights play a significant role in transaction costs. The restrictions and rules around property ownership can impact decisions and the nature of transactions.

There are many ways to beat the market that sound good on paper, but very few fund managers actually succeed in doing it consistently in real life.
One major reason for this failure is the impact of transaction costs, which include fees from buying and selling stocks and the difference between buying and selling prices.
While the market has inefficiencies, it's difficult for investors to profit from them in practice, making real investment success much harder than it seems.