IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jinsec/v16y2020i2p199-215_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Property rights and domestication

Author

Listed:
  • Lueck, Dean
  • Torrens, Gustavo

Abstract

This paper combines the property rights approach of Barzel with models from renewable resource and evolutionary economics to examine the domestication of wild animals. Wild animals are governed by weak property rights to stocks and individuals while domesticated animals are governed by private ownership of stocks and individuals. The complex evolutionary process of domestication can be viewed as a conversion of wild populations into private property, as well as a transition from natural selection to economic selection controlled by owners of populations and individuals. In our framework domestication is not the explicit goal of any economic agent, but it emerges as a long-run outcome of an innovation in hunting strategies in a hunter–gatherer society. Our formal model also suggests that the domestication process moves slowly at first but then proceeds rapidly, and is aligned with the archeological evidence on domestication events.

Suggested Citation

  • Lueck, Dean & Torrens, Gustavo, 2020. "Property rights and domestication," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 199-215, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jinsec:v:16:y:2020:i:2:p:199-215_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1744137419000390/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. ’t Sas-Rolfes, Michael & Emslie, Richard, 2024. "African Rhino Conservation and the Interacting Influences of Property, Prices, and Policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    2. Kandace D. Hollenbach & Stephen B. Carmody, 2022. "From foraging to farming: Domesticating landscapes in the Midsouth three thousand years ago," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 240-256, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jinsec:v:16:y:2020:i:2:p:199-215_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.