The Market for Ideas

The normal treatment of governmental regulation of markets makes a sharp distinction between the ordinary market for goods and services and the activities covered by the First Amendment, the exercise of religious beliefs, speech, and writing, which I call, for brevity, “the market for ideas.” The phrase, “the market for ideas,” does not very exactly describe the boundaries of the area to which the First Amendment has been applied. Indeed, these boundaries do not seem to have been very clearly drawn. But there can be little doubt that the market for ideas, the expression of opinion in speech and writing and similar activities, is at the center of the activities protected by the First Amendment and it is with these activities that discussion of the First Amendment has been largely concerned.

The arguments that I will be considering long antedate the passage of the First Amendment (which obviously incorporated views already held) and there is some danger for economists, although not necessarily for American lawyers, in confining our discussion to the First Amendment rather than considering the general problem of which it is a part. The danger is that our discussion will tend to concentrate on American court opinions, and particularly those of the Supreme Court, and that, as a result, we will be led to adopt the approach to the regulation of markets found congenial by the courts, rather than one developed by economists, a procedure which has already gone a long way toward ruining public utility economics and has done much harm to economic discussion of monopoly problems generally. This approach is confining in another way, since concentration on issues within the context of the American Constitution makes it more difficult to draw on the experience and thought of the rest of the world.

RC

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R. H. Coase

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The normal treatment of governmental regulation of markets makes a sharp distinction between the ordinary market for goods and services and the activities covered by the First Amendment, the exercise of religious beliefs, speech, and writing, which I call, for brevity, “the market for ideas.” The phrase, “the market for ideas,” does not very exactly describe the boundaries of the area to which the First Amendment has been applied. Indeed, these boundaries do not seem to have been very clearly drawn. But there can be little doubt that the market for ideas, the expression of opinion in speech and writing and similar activities, is at the center of the activities protected by the First Amendment and it is with these activities that discussion of the First Amendment has been largely concerned.

The arguments that I will be considering long antedate the passage of the First Amendment (which obviously incorporated views already held) and there is some danger for economists, although not necessarily for American lawyers, in confining our discussion to the First Amendment rather than considering the general problem of which it is a part. The danger is that our discussion will tend to concentrate on American court opinions, and particularly those of the Supreme Court, and that, as a result, we will be led to adopt the approach to the regulation of markets found congenial by the courts, rather than one developed by economists, a procedure which has already gone a long way toward ruining public utility economics and has done much harm to economic discussion of monopoly problems generally. This approach is confining in another way, since concentration on issues within the context of the American Constitution makes it more difficult to draw on the experience and thought of the rest of the world.