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Applied and bridge studies study record
Public economics, trade & development

Tax It, Trade It, Govern It: Pigou, Coase, Ostrom as Three Switches on MST

CONTENT · Archive pendingSTATUS · Manuscript in progressSSRN · Not yet posted
Archive pending: this older foundational companion record is being superseded by the current top-100 core route. Treat the Decision Accounting papers, Missing System Theory papers, System Asset Pricing Model welfare ledger, and active core records as the production source of truth; use this record only as historical source material.
Open teaching deckSSRN — not yet postedPublication record
MECHANISM
Identify the incentive structure and the condition that would falsify the claim.
RULE CHANGE
Read the intervention only after the paper shows how the current payoff space fails to support system welfare.
READER USE
Use the summary to see where private gain creates system exposure, then check the study record.
Reading βW
βW means annual system-welfare loss divided by annual industry revenue Π. Revenue is the denominator, never profit, earnings, or net income; ΔW and Π must use the same domain, same time period, and same activity boundary. See the βW methodology manual.
Contribution — what this adds to the conversation
The paper's argument is that the three traditions are not rivals. They are three operations on a single missing coordinate. The Missing System Theory (MST; Postnieks 2026a) proves that in any game where the payoff space is indexed only by the parties to a transaction, the welfare of the system on which those parties depend is excluded by construction
WHAT'S NEW · Pigou is the imposed-price switch. Coase is the non-binding boundary where the system coordinate is tradable at zero transaction cost. Ostrom is the endogenous repair that folds the coordinate back into incentives. Capture becomes the predicted failure mode of the planner-imposed switch.
Archive pending
Archive pending: this older foundational companion record is being superseded by the current top-100 core route. Treat the Decision Accounting papers, Missing System Theory papers, System Asset Pricing Model welfare ledger, and active core records as the production source of truth; use this record only as historical source material.
Use the theorem, source chapters, or teaching deck tabs for this work while the public summary is reconciled.