Economic Analysis of Property Rights

Economic property rights are the fundamental unit of economic analysis, necessary to resource allocation, organizations, and institutions.

Yoram Barzel (Author), Douglas W. Allen (Author)

9781009374729, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 September 2023

300 pages
27 x 18 x 2 cm, 0.505 kg

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.

Part I. Conceptual Issues: 1. The Neoclassical Problem
2. Economic Property Rights
3 : Transaction Costs
4. Information Costs
5. The Theory of Economic Property Rights
Part II. Contracts, Organizations, and Institutions: 6. Exchange, Contracts, and Contract Choice
7. Divided Ownership and Organization
8. Institutions
Part III. Establishing Property Rights: 9. Capture in the Public Domain
10. Forming Property Rights
11. Benefits of the Public Domain
Part IV. Non Price Allocation and Other Issues: 12. Non-wage Labor Markets
13. Property Rights in Non-Market Allocations
14. Additional Property Rights Applications
15. The Property Rights Model
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economics of industrial organisation [KCD]