Introduction

Abstract

Abstract No one goes to the barricades for efficiency. For liberty, equality, or fraternity, perhaps, but never for efficiency. Efficiency’s failure as a revolutionary battle cry is rather puzzling, at least to an economist. Efficiency is the one thing everyone should go to the barricades for. Will the chapters in this volume therefore inspire marches on city hall? It’s doubtful, but even modest moves toward more efficient policies can be highly valuable. Ronald Coase, the 1991 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, argued that an economist who delays a bad policy from being implemented by as little as a week has earned his salary for a lifetime. Presumably an economist who encourages a good policy has done the same. Coase’s own contribution to more efficient public policy, his 1959 proposal to auction off the radio spectrum, was not adopted until 1993. Coase, however, was not disappointed by the nearly forty years of delay. The first nine spectrum auctions alone raised over $20 billion in revenue and reduced deadweight costs by close to $1 billimi.