The Origins and Consequences of Property Rights: Austrian, Public Choice, and Institutional Economics Perspectives (Elements in Austrian Economics)

Property rights are the rules governing ownership in society. This Element offers an analytical framework to understand the origins and consequences of property rights. It conceptualizes of the political economy of property rights as a concern with the follow questions: What explains the origins of economic and legal property rights? What are the consequences of different property rights institutions for wealth creation, conservation, and political order? Why do property institutions change? Why do legal reforms relating to property rights such as land redistribution and legal titling improve livelihoods in some contexts but not others? In analyzing property rights, the authors emphasize the complementarity of insights from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, including Austrian economics, public choice, and institutional economics, including the Bloomington School of institutional analysis and political economy. Cover Title page Copyright page The Origins and Consequences of Property Rights Contents 1. Introduction 1.1 The Renaissance of Institutional Analysis 1.2 Why Property Rights Matter 1.3 Dimensions of Property Rights 1.4 Function and Form of Property Rights 1.5 The Necessity of Political Economy 1.6 Outline 2. The Origins of Property Rights 2.1 Economic Property Rights 2.1.1 The Spontaneous Emergence of Private Property Rights in Europe and North America 2.1.2 Private Property Rights in Criminal Organizations 2.1.3 Private Property Rights in Customary Organizations 2.1.4 Communal Property Regimes 2.2 Legal Property Rights 2.2.1 Theories of Emergence of Property Rights 2.2.2 The Sovereign’s Dilemma and the Credibility of Commitment 2.3 Selective Enforcement of Property Rights 2.3.1 Selective Enforcement of Property Rights in the United States 2.3.2 Property Rights and Economic Growth in Mexican Economic History 2.3.3 Marketing Boards and Predatory Property Rights in sub-Saharan Africa 2.3.4 Selective Property Rights in China and India 2.3.5 Property Rights in the Ottoman Empire 2.4 Property Rights and State Building 2.4.1 Barbarian Settlements 2.4.2 Wealth-Creation Externalities, Property Rights, and Collective Defense 2.4.3 State Building by Giving Away Property 2.5 Toward a Theory of the Origins of Property Rights 3. The Consequences of Property Rights 3.1 Property Rights and Wealth Creation 3.1.1 Property Rights and Economic Growth in Economic History 3.1.2 Socialism and Its Discontents 3.1.3 China’s Growth Miracle 3.1.4 Property and Economic Development in Botswana and Somalia 3.1.5 The Importance of Considering All Dimensions of Private Property Rights 3.1.6 Wealth-Destroying Private Property Rights 3.1.7 Trade-Offs 3.2 Property Rights and the Commons 3.2.1 The Tragedy of the Commons 3.2.2 Governance of the Commons 3.2.3 The Radio Spectrum 3.2.4 Commons at Scale 3.2.5 Pollution, Climate Change, and the Global Commons 3.3 Knowledge Commons 3.4 Property Rights and Political Order 4. Change in Property Rights 4.1 The Debate over Institutional Change 4.2 Efficiency Perspectives 4.3 Predatory Perspectives 4.4 Reconciling the Debate 4.5 Evolutionary Perspectives, or Why Property Is “Always Becoming” 4.6 Polycentricism, Efficient Redaction, and Experimentation in Property Rights 5. Property Rights and Development Policy 5.1 Land Redistribution 5.2 Land Titling 5.3 Land Grabbing 5.4 Technology to the Rescue? 6. Conclusion References Acknowledgements