An Economic Theory of the Evolutionary Emergence of Property Rights

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Eswaran, Mukesh; Neary, Hugh M.
• 署名单位: University of British Columbia
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.6.3.203
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 203-226
• 关键词: preferences; dictator; origin

摘要

We model the emergence of an innate, biological sense of property rights where resource scarcity and output contestability reign. Preferences evolve such that, in evolutionarily stable equilibrium, an object is valued more by an individual who possesses it, or has produced it, than if he is neither possessor nor producer. In a distributional contest for the object, the possessor/producer will devote more effort to retaining it than an interloper will to expropriating it. Asymmetry in preferences for an object between possessor/producer and interloper, and consequent asymmetry of efforts defending or expropriating it, constitute our concept of innate property rights.