University of Michigan Legal Working Paper Series
University of Michigan John M. Olin Center for Law & Economics Working Paper Series
The Evolution of Property Rights: A Synthetic Overview
Abstract
In this paper I review, extend, and critique two contrasting approaches to the evolution of property rights. The legal literature on the subject is dominated by a conventional approach, which holds a virtual monopoly despite its many shortcomings, and the literature neglects an alternative approach, despite its many virtues (including, but not limited to, the virtue of responding to many of the conventional approach’s deficiencies). The paper provides an overview of both approaches, including a brief intellectual history of each – and should thus inform readers without specialized knowledge of the subject but nevertheless interested in it – and aims among other things to make the alternative approach salient, in particular because an integrated treatment that draws on a combination of the two approaches does more explanatory work than can either approach on its own.
Subject Area
Property-Personal and Real
Recommended Citation
James E. Krier,
"The Evolution of Property Rights: A Synthetic Overview"
(November 2008).
University of Michigan Legal Working Paper Series.
University of Michigan John M. Olin Center for Law & Economics Working Paper Series.
Working Paper 91.
http://law.bepress.com/umichlwps/olin/art91
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