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The Ecological and Civil Mainsprings of Property: An Experimental Economic History of Whalers' Rules of Capture

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  • Bart J. Wilson
  • Taylor Jaworski
  • Karl E. Schurter
  • Andrew Smyth

Abstract

This article uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th centuries developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their prey, the primary implication being that different ecological conditions led to different rules of capture. Ceteris paribus, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely, as Samuel Pufendorf theorized over 300 years ago, that the members of the community are civil minded . The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

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  • Bart J. Wilson & Taylor Jaworski & Karl E. Schurter & Andrew Smyth, 2012. "The Ecological and Civil Mainsprings of Property: An Experimental Economic History of Whalers' Rules of Capture," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(4), pages 617-656, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:28:y:2012:i:4:p:617-656
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewr024
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    13. Taylor Jaworski & Bart J. Wilson, 2013. "Go West Young Man: Self‐Selection and Endogenous Property Rights," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(4), pages 886-904, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Erik O. Kimbrough & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2016. "Norms Make Preferences Social," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 608-638.
    2. Marco Faillo & Matteo Rizzolli & Stephan Tontrup, 2016. "Thou shalt not steal (from hard-working people)An experiment on respect for property claims," Econometica Working Papers wp58, Econometica.
    3. Taylor Jaworski & Bart J. Wilson, 2013. "Go West Young Man: Self‐Selection and Endogenous Property Rights," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(4), pages 886-904, April.
    4. Andreas, Diekmann & Przepiorka, Wojtek, 2015. "“Take One for the Team!” Individual Heterogeneity and the Emergence of Latent Norms in a Volunteer's Dilemma," SocArXiv q9xj6, Center for Open Science.
    5. Ahn, T.K. & Loukas, Balafoutas & Batsaikhan, Mongoljin & Campos-Ortiz, Francisco & Putterman, Louis & Sutter, Matthias, 2018. "Trust and communication in a property rights dilemma," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 413-433.
    6. Joy Buchanan & Bart Wilson, 2014. "An experiment on protecting intellectual property," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(4), pages 691-716, December.
    7. Faillo, Marco & Rizzolli, Matteo & Tontrup, Stephan, 2019. "Thou shalt not steal: Taking aversion with legal property claims," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 88-101.
    8. Roger D. Congleton, 2018. "Toward a Rule-Based Model of Human Choice: On the Nature of Homo Constitutionalus," Working Papers 18-09, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    9. Kimbrough, Erik O. & Wilson, Bart J., 2013. "Insiders, outsiders, and the adaptability of informal rules to ecological shocks," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 29-40.
    10. Roger Congleton, 2015. "The Logic of Collective Action and beyond," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 217-234, September.
    11. Wakamatsu, Mihoko & Anderson, Christopher M., 2018. "The Endogenous Evolution of Common Property Management Systems," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 211-217.
    12. Bart Wilson, 2015. "Further towards a theory of the emergence of property," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 201-222, April.
    13. Neil Martin, 2016. "Strategy as Mutually Contingent Choice," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(2), pages 21582440166, May.
    14. Peter Katuščák & Tomáš Miklánek, 2023. "What drives conditional cooperation in public good games?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 435-467, April.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • N50 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - General, International, or Comparative

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