The more technical and abstruse a paper, and the less you are an expert in the area yourself, the more you should rely on secondary sources that may be able to present it in a more user-friendly way. There is, after all, no point reading the original if you can’t truly understand it. However, some academic papers are written in a sufficiently comprehensible style that almost anyone can be enlightened by them.
On the topic of which: an economics paper which made a big impression on me is Hahnel & Sheeran’s “Misinterpreting the Coase Theorem” (Journal of Economic Issues, 43, pp. 215-237). Unfortunately there appears to be no freely available copy of the published version online, but there is a preprint without the figures. It’s a bit less accessible than Coase’s paper, but I imagine pretty well anyone who’s taken a microeconomics class could follow it.
It doesn’t look like it. (Assuming the post you’re linking is this; I think your URL omits the last “l”.)
Nick Szabo’s argument is that the Coase theorem only works by assuming away prior allocations of rights that allow one party to overtly coerce or inflict violence on another.
Robin Hahnel & Kristen Sheeran’s core argument is that parties engaging in Coasian bargaining often do so under incomplete information, which opens the door to Pareto inefficient bargains. [Edit: or indeed to no bargain being reached at all, a possibility I once illustrated with someone else’s example.]
The more technical and abstruse a paper, and the less you are an expert in the area yourself, the more you should rely on secondary sources that may be able to present it in a more user-friendly way. There is, after all, no point reading the original if you can’t truly understand it. However, some academic papers are written in a sufficiently comprehensible style that almost anyone can be enlightened by them.
Some that have had a particular effect on me:
Order Defined in the Process of its Emergence, Buchanan.
The Use of Knowledge in Society, Hayek.
The Problem of Social Cost, Coase
The last is the most cited law review article of all time, in no small part because of its accessibility.
On the topic of which: an economics paper which made a big impression on me is Hahnel & Sheeran’s “Misinterpreting the Coase Theorem” (Journal of Economic Issues, 43, pp. 215-237). Unfortunately there appears to be no freely available copy of the published version online, but there is a preprint without the figures. It’s a bit less accessible than Coase’s paper, but I imagine pretty well anyone who’s taken a microeconomics class could follow it.
Is the basic argument that same as the one in this blog post?
It doesn’t look like it. (Assuming the post you’re linking is this; I think your URL omits the last “l”.)
Nick Szabo’s argument is that the Coase theorem only works by assuming away prior allocations of rights that allow one party to overtly coerce or inflict violence on another.
Robin Hahnel & Kristen Sheeran’s core argument is that parties engaging in Coasian bargaining often do so under incomplete information, which opens the door to Pareto inefficient bargains. [Edit: or indeed to no bargain being reached at all, a possibility I once illustrated with someone else’s example.]