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Yoram Barzel: commemorating the life of an institutional economist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2024

Douglas W. Allen
Douglas W. Allen*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
*
Email: allen@sfu.ca
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Abstract

Yoram Barzel was a Chicago trained price theorist who became a foundational contributor to the literature on property rights and transaction costs. In this commemoration I outline the academic path he took, but then concentrate on the set of transformative ideas he had that led to ‘the theory of economic property rights’. It was Yoram's belief that such a theory is the ground floor for the study of the organization of economic activity, and therefore, should be used to understand the structure and form of law, institutions, firms, and all other forms of organization.

Keywords

Barzelinstitutional economicsproperty rightstransaction costsoperationalism
Type
Note
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 20 , 2024 , e15
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Millennium Economics Ltd.

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