Property Out of Conflict: A Survey and Some New Results

Maria Cubel and Santiago Sánchez-Pagés

No 2wgyx, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Property rights often emerge from adversarial interactions in which agents make claims and defend them from the appropriation efforts of others. In this paper, we first offer a survey of the theoretical literature on this issue. We systematize the existing models by classifying them into two families and show that they can explain the emergence of classic types or property rights. We then explore a new model where agents can become the sole owner of a commonly owned production resource through an exclusion contest. We show that if overexploitation under joint property is severe enough relative to the returns to scale of conflict activities, private property emerges out of conflict. Inequality makes common ownership less likely to emerge. Finally, we characterize the set of common ownership regimes which are Pareto efficient and immune to conflict. Results show that proportionality to labour inputs in output sharing makes common ownership more resilient to conflict when inequality is higher.

Date: 2020-05-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/5eb536ffa2199501025d4cac/

Related works:
Journal Article: Property Out of Conflict: A Survey and Some New Results (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:2wgyx

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/2wgyx

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().