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Ownership or possession? On Bart Wilson's concept of ownership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Frank Decker Open the ORCID record for Frank Decker [Opens in a new window]
Frank Decker*
Affiliation:
The University of Sydney Law School, Sydney, Australia
*
Corresponding author. Email: frank.decker@sydney.edu.au and fdecker@uni-bremen.de
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Abstract

In a recent article Wilson explores the origins and explanation of ownership (property) as a custom, and argues that the custom of ownership is the primary concept and that property rights are subordinated to ownership. I argue that Wilson's subordination argument is unpersuasive; the linguistic evidence used by Wilson fits better with the concept of possession; and ownership is not a human universal.

Keywords

CollateralGDR land reformownershippossessionresidue of rightssecurity
Type
Comment
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 276 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Millennium Economics Ltd.

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References

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