An Economic Theory of the Evolutionary Emergence of Property Rights

Mukesh Eswaran and Hugh M. Neary

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2014, vol. 6, issue 3, 203-26

Abstract: We model the emergence of an innate, biological sense of property rights where resource scarcity and output contestability reign. Preferences evolve such that, in evolutionarily stable equilibrium, an object is valued more by an individual who possesses it, or has produced it, than if he is neither possessor nor producer. In a distributional contest for the object, the possessor/producer will devote more effort to retaining it than an interloper will to expropriating it. Asymmetry in preferences for an object between possessor/producer and interloper, and consequent asymmetry of efforts defending or expropriating it, constitute our concept of innate property rights.

JEL-codes: C73 D11 P14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.6.3.203
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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