Economic Analysis Of Property Rights

The standard neoclassical model of economics is incapable of explaining why one form of organization arises over another. It is a model where transaction costs are implicitly assumed to not exist; however, transaction costs are here defined as the costs of strengthening a given distribution of economic property rights, and they always exist. Economic Analysis of Property Rights is a study of how individuals organise resources to maximise the value of their economic rights over these resources. It offers a unified theoretical structure to deal with exchange, rights formation, and organisation that traditional economic theory often ignores. It explains how transaction costs can be reduced through reorganization and, in the end, how the distribution of property rights that exists is the one that maximizes wealth net of these transaction costs. This necessary hypothesis explains much of the puzzling organizations and institutions that exist now and have existed in the past.

This is a study of the way individuals organise the use of resources in order to maximise the value of their economic rights over these resources.

This book contains illuminating and carefully written literature reviews on the central topics of the economics of property rights and institutions. As a bonus, it includes two fascinating chapters on topics off the beaten path slavery and new types of property rights in environmental goods. This book will be indispensible for students and experienced scholars alike. Eric Posner, University of Chicago Law School, US This study covers property law and property rights, providing a full summary and comprehensive bibliography of the existing law, together with discussion from an economic perspective on the most important aspects of property law. Leading experts have brought together their knowledge and insight on a full range of issues including comparative property law and the history of property law to create a truly autonomous interdisciplinary resource. This essential reference work will strongly appeal to scholars and students enrolled in academic programmes of law and economics. Academic lawyers involved in research and teaching of private (common) law, practicing lawyers in the field of real estate law, as well as economists involved in researching development economics and transition economics will also find this an invaluable resource.

The property rights model; The public domain: Rationing by waiting and price controls; Contract choice: The tenancy contract; Divided ownership; The old firm and the new organization; The formation of rights; Slavery; Wealth-maximizing constraints on property rights; Property rights and non-market allocation; Additional property rights applications; The property rights model: Recapitulation.

Issues such as the patentability of scientific ideas, the market for organs and open source software are hotly debated and yet poorly understood. In particular, there is a great need for sound economic theorizing on such issues. There is also a need for a clear and concise exposition of the state-of-the-art of the economics of property rights. This book fulfils these various needs.

The discipline of law and economics has earned a reputation for developing plausible and empirically testable theories on the social functions and the impact of legal institutions. Property rights are a field in which this has been very successful. In this book, economic property rights theories are applied to case law in order to examine the practice and solution of real life conflicts. The author examines the economic problems which are dealt with in these cases and evaluate the courts’ decisions from an economic angle. Cases are examined from across the UK, the US, Germany, Belgium and Canada to allow international comparisons to be made. These comparisons reveal that, regardless of the legal system, many legal issues have similar economic roots and therefore similar models of economic analysis can be applied. The analysis of these cases also shows that the discipline of law and economics is not only successful in developing explanatory models but also useful to generate better considerations and solutions for legal conflicts in individual cases. This book aims to bridge the gap between the academic and professional literature and demonstrate the benefits of the economic analysis of property rights cases to all those who are interested in law and economics.

To understand recent developments in Eastern Europe requires a method of analysis that is capable of internalizing into a theoretical framework (i) the logical premises deduced from the costs of transactions and incentive structures generated by various institutions and (ii) the evidence for refutable implications of those premises. The economics of property rights is such a theory. It expands the scope of the ability of economic analysis to explain a wide range of institutional structures and provides empirical corroboration of its logical implications. The economics of property rights is, then, an effective scholarly instrument that offers more significant understanding of the three current issues in the area of comparative economic studies: (i) evaluating the performance of alternative institutional arrangements, (ii) explaining the failure of socialist institutions in Eastern Europe, and (iii) identifying the costs (political as well as economic) of institutional reforms in that part of the world. In that sense, the book is both timely and relevant. In the late 1980s East Europeans crossed the threshold of fear and forced their leaders to abandon Marxism. With that theory of history dead and buried, the cost of current sacrifices in the pursuit of socialism has risen relative to the present value of its expected future benefits.

Featuring a broad range of contributors, current data, and case studies, this book explores how the discussion of environmental policy requires the integration of legal-economic analysis of property rights issues.