The Origins, Nature, and Content of the Right to Property: Five Economic Solitudes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The thesis of this article is that the now extensive contemporary literature on the economics of property rights has generated more heat than light. Economists have invoked at least five distinct theories of ownership or property rights in their work. Unfortunately, authors frequently fail to acknowledge the existence of competing theories of property rights that stand as conceptual rivals to the theory that they, often implicitly, invoke. Nowhere is this problem more evident than in the literature on regulatory takings, a literature that has a justifiable reputation for its inconsistent conclusions. Other fields in which theories of property rights play an important role include intellectual property, the economics of contracts, competition analysis and policy, externalities, and the economics of information. This article compares and evaluates five competing theories of property rights that have been advanced and used by economists: classical liberalism, utilitarianism, legal positivism, pragmatism, and modern libertarianism. These theories present divergent accounts of the origin and the nature of ownership claims. They also conceptualize the evolution of ownership institutions as well as ownership patterns quite differently. There are also important differences in incentives that exist under institutional regimes based on each theory. Le présent article repose sur la thèse selon laquelle la volumineuse littérature contemporaine sur l’économie des droits de propriété génère plus de controverse que d’explications. Les économistes ont invoqué au moins cinq théories distinctes de la propriété ou des droits de propriété dans leurs travaux. Malheureusement, les auteurs omettent fréquemment de tenir compte de l’existence de théories des droits de propriété concurrentielles qui se présentent sous l’étiquette de rivales conceptuelles à la théorie qu’ils ont, souvent implicitement, invoquée. Ce problème n’est nulle part plus évident que dans la littérature sur l’expropriation indirecte, une littérature qui possède une réputation justifiée en raison de ses conclusions contradictoires. La théorie des droits de propriété joue également un rôle important dans d’autres domaines, tels que la propriété intellectuelle, l’économie des contrats, l’analyse et la politique de la concurrence, l’externalité et l’économie de l’information. Le présent article compare et évalue cinq théories des droits de propriété concurrentielles avancées et utilisées par les économistes : le libéralisme classique, l’utilitarisme, le positivisme juridique, le pragmatisme et le libertarisme moderne. Ces théories présentent des versions divergentes de l’origine et de la nature des revendications de propriété. Elles conceptualisent également l’évolution des institutions et des structures de propriété de façon totalement différente. Les incitatifs des régimes institutionnels varient de façon importante selon la théorie.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.040 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.022 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".