This paper is concerned with the way economists conceptualize the relationship between politics and property rights. It is customary for economists to treat polity and economy as comprising separate domains of human action. In contrast, we treat society as a single domain of action comprised of...

Self-governance of common pool resources is presumed to work well in small, homogeneous communities where interaction is repeated, agents have low discount rates, and information about past performance is available. It is presumed to work poorly elsewhere. This paper provides a case study of...

This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a...

Liberalism correctly understood is little more than the persistent and consistent applications of the principles of economics of the affairs of men be they domestic or international. These include mutually beneficial exchange, the absence of political privilege, and toleration. The institutional...

Economics as a social science is about exchange and the institutions within which exchange relationships are formed and transactions are executed. Yoram Barzel's contribution to economics and political economy reflect this focus on exchange and institutions. In this paper, I will sketch a theory...

The particular focus of this chapter will be to analyze institutional change from an Ostromian perspective by analyzing the relationship between self-governance, polycentricity, and federalism. Throughout work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, there exist two consistent themes regarding the...

According to Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps (2013, p. 123), Mises’s critique of economic calculation under socialism renders him the originator of the economic analysis of property rights. This paper also suggests that implicit to Mises’s impossibility theorem was also the origins of the...

This paper is written for a Liberty Fund conference on 'Liberty in relation to law and macroeconomics'. The paper works with recognition that the models we use are not neutral devices to see more clearly into reality because they also shade that reality in different ways. For instance, a model...

Economists necessarily use models in thinking about their material because there is no alternative given the complexity of the material we face. But through what kinds of models might we use to theorize about the problem of governance? There is a choice between theoretical frameworks in this...

There are many instances in nature of animals having a form of property rights, a respect for mine and thine. This paper addresses the question of how a norm of respecting property rights can emerge within a group of individuals without access to third party enforcement. Building upon work in...