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On the primacy of economic property rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Douglas W. Allen
Douglas W. Allen*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
*
Corresponding author. Email: allen@sfu.ca
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Abstract

Bart Wilson suggests that economists interested in property rights have it all backwards when they define ownership as a bundle of rights. Rather he argues that ownership comes first in the form of an abstract concept. I claim there is a small element of truth to this, but the bulk of what he argues is already understood through the concept of economic property rights. Wilson's consternation is mostly the result of a failure to appreciate this latter concept.

Keywords

Economic property rightsownership
Type
Comment
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 272 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Millennium Economics Ltd.

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Footnotes

Thanks to Geoffrey Hodgson for requesting this comment.

References

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