Question

Economic historians have increasingly attempted to reframe the ancient Mediterranean doctrine of general average—codified in the Lex Rhodia, which mandated that cargo jettisoned during maritime emergencies be compensated proportionally by all cargo owners—as an early triumph of pure Coasean bargaining. Under this view, ancient Mediterranean shippers rationally minimized transaction costs by pre-committing to optimal risk-sharing contracts. While this formalist economic modeling certainly illuminates the latent efficiency incentives underlying the ancient rule, it remains somewhat unpersuasive when applied uncritically across disparate centuries of seafaring. The model’s reliance on frictionless information sharing obscures the pervasive asymmetries and customary communal norms that in fact dictated how Mediterranean shipmasters made emergency calculations. Rather than an unblemished precursor to modern neoclassical risk pooling, general average was fundamentally a pragmatic, localized compromise forged under severe empirical constraints.

Based on the passage, the author's attitude toward the modern economic reframing of general average can best be described as which of the following?