# Contested concept: transaction costs

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- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: The dispute over what counts as a transaction cost determines whether behavioral and strategic failures of bargaining refute the theorem or are absorbed into it. A broad sense makes the theorem unfalsifiable, while a narrow sense makes it look empirically false.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/transaction costs` (data: `/concept/transaction costs.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Broad: any impediment to bargaining and exchange, including asymmetric information, social awkwardness, holdout and free-rider problems, and non-pecuniary costs such as anger at unfairness.** — used in 6 claim(s)
- **A cost whose existence explains why private property rights arise as institutions, so that zero costs and property rights cannot coexist.** — used in 4 claim(s)
- **Narrow: resource costs of bargaining. Strategic incentive problems under incomplete information are distinct failures, not 'mere' transaction costs.** — used in 3 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Even in the simplest of situations, with only two individuals, social costs can increase transaction costs to be unreasonably high so as to…](/claim/claim_0226582a77df.md) _(sense: Broad: any impediment to bargaining and exchange, including asymmetric information, social awkwardness, holdout and free-rider problems, and non-pecuniary costs such as anger at unfairness.)_
- [Whether it is the awkwardness of the exchange or the fear of greatly under-valuing someone else's property rights, transaction costs can st…](/claim/claim_1658d54e5a2c.md) _(sense: Broad: any impediment to bargaining and exchange, including asymmetric information, social awkwardness, holdout and free-rider problems, and non-pecuniary costs such as anger at unfairness.)_
- [Treating anger at the unfairness of having to bargain as a non-pecuniary transaction cost is an unreasonable extension of the concept of tr…](/claim/claim_4799a9db1f2f.md) _(sense: Narrow: resource costs of bargaining. Strategic incentive problems under incomplete information are distinct failures, not 'mere' transaction costs.)_
- [[In the efficiency version of the Coase theorem,] the zero transaction cost condition is taken to mean that there are no impediments to bar…](/claim/claim_60c20699dadc.md) _(sense: Broad: any impediment to bargaining and exchange, including asymmetric information, social awkwardness, holdout and free-rider problems, and non-pecuniary costs such as anger at unfairness.)_
- [Asymmetric information is included in transaction costs.](/claim/claim_788a8bee3b37.md) _(sense: Broad: any impediment to bargaining and exchange, including asymmetric information, social awkwardness, holdout and free-rider problems, and non-pecuniary costs such as anger at unfairness.)_
- [Private property rights are institutions that arise to reduce transaction costs.](/claim/claim_796b2d8984e0.md) _(sense: A cost whose existence explains why private property rights arise as institutions, so that zero costs and property rights cannot coexist.)_
- [Coase and his defenders would simply view the anger at the unfairness of having to bargain as a non-pecuniary transaction cost.](/claim/claim_97e0908a53b0.md) _(sense: Broad: any impediment to bargaining and exchange, including asymmetric information, social awkwardness, holdout and free-rider problems, and non-pecuniary costs such as anger at unfairness.)_
- [When [the information assumptions of complete information do] not [hold], Coasean solutions predictably yield highly inefficient results be…](/claim/claim_9ac73128bbf9.md) _(sense: Narrow: resource costs of bargaining. Strategic incentive problems under incomplete information are distinct failures, not 'mere' transaction costs.)_
- [Coase and his defenders would simply view [parties' anger at the unfairness of having to bargain] as a non-pecuniary transaction cost, but …](/claim/claim_ae051a2299d5.md) _(sense: Broad: any impediment to bargaining and exchange, including asymmetric information, social awkwardness, holdout and free-rider problems, and non-pecuniary costs such as anger at unfairness.)_
- [The existence of private property rights implies that transaction costs are non-zero.](/claim/claim_c3240fe41d25.md) _(sense: A cost whose existence explains why private property rights arise as institutions, so that zero costs and property rights cannot coexist.)_
- [Zero transaction costs and private property rights cannot logically coexist.](/claim/claim_c73f6995fd0b.md) _(sense: A cost whose existence explains why private property rights arise as institutions, so that zero costs and property rights cannot coexist.)_
- [If transaction costs are zero, the assumption of private property rights is not necessary.](/claim/claim_d2a4a8ed51f4.md) _(sense: A cost whose existence explains why private property rights arise as institutions, so that zero costs and property rights cannot coexist.)_
- [[The failures of Coasean bargaining to yield efficient outcomes] are not due to transaction costs (although these are also quite prevalent)](/claim/claim_d453664e1daf.md) _(sense: Narrow: resource costs of bargaining. Strategic incentive problems under incomplete information are distinct failures, not 'mere' transaction costs.)_