Mask mandate v voluntary exchange

Professors at UT-Austin may pay students to where masks (Aug 2021). It illustrates two different ways to get people to wear masks.

1. A mask mandate. Here, the university acts as the ruler and coerces people to wear masks. VCU, where I teach, requires masks in all indoor settings and encourages them outdoors when social distancing is not possible.
2. A market for wearing masks. Here, someone pays people to wear masks. Adjustments in the price could increase or decrease compliance. An important question, of course, is, "Who pays the price?" Professors at UT-Austin think that the university should.

Coase discussed the notion that someone should pay someone else to reduce a negative externality when he developed what is now called the Coase Theorem.