IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/roi/wpaper/0902.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evaluating the Economic Performance of Property Systems

Author

Listed:
  • James Bessen

    (Research on Innovation, Boston University School of Law)

Abstract

How should the economic performance of property systems be evaluated? Benefit-cost analysis is widely used to evaluate non-market based regulation when prices are not available. Market prices provide better information for property systems, but market prices are not necessarily socially optimal when property rights are imperfect. This paper discusses two practical approaches to evaluating the performance of property systems, one based on an analysis of institutional performance, the other based on measuring incentives. As an illustration, I show how these approaches might be used to evaluate the US patent system.

Suggested Citation

  • James Bessen, 2009. "Evaluating the Economic Performance of Property Systems," Working Papers 0902, Research on Innovation.
    • Handle: RePEc:roi:wpaper:0902
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1427904
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Buchanan, James M & Yoon, Yong J, 2000. "Symmetric Tragedies: Commons and Anticommons," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(1), pages 1-13, April.
    2. Wiggins, Steven N & Libecap, Gary D, 1985. "Oil Field Unitization: Contractual Failure in the Presence of Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 368-385, June.
    3. Boldrin,Michele & Levine,David K., 2010. "Against Intellectual Monopoly," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521127264, October.
    4. Jean O. Lanjouw & Philip I. Levy, 2002. "Untitled: A Study of Formal and Informal Property Rights in Urban Ecuador," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(482), pages 986-1019, October.
    5. Gary D. Libecap & Dean Lueck, 2009. "The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Institutions," NBER Working Papers 14942, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Kolstad, Charles D & Ulen, Thomas S & Johnson, Gary V, 1990. "Ex Post Liability for Harm vs. Ex Ante Safety Regulation: Substitutes or Complements?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 888-901, September.
    7. Carl Shapiro, 2001. "Navigating the Patent Thicket: Cross Licenses, Patent Pools, and Standard Setting," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 1, pages 119-150, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Kaplow, Louis, 1990. "Optimal Deterrence, Uninformed Individuals, and Acquiring Information about Whether Acts Are Subject to Sanctions," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 93-128, Spring.
    9. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 9, pages 178-203, Palgrave Macmillan.
    10. Lueck, Dean, 1995. "The Rule of First Possession and the Design of the Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 393-436, October.
    11. Norbert Schulz & Francesco Parisi & Ben Depoorter, 2002. "Fragmentation in Property: Towards a General Model," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 158(4), pages 594-613, December.
    12. Miceli, Thomas J & Munneke, Henry J & Sirmans, C F & Turnbull, Geoffrey K, 2002. "Title Systems and Land Values," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 565-582, October.
    13. Gary D. Libecap & Dean Lueck, 2009. "The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Institutions," ICER Working Papers 14-2009, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    14. David Gerard, 2001. "Transaction Costs and the Value of Mining Claims," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 77(3), pages 371-384.
    15. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole & Marcin Strojwas, 2003. "Cooperative Marketing Agreements Between Competitors: Evidence from Patent Pools," NBER Working Papers 9680, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Libecap, Gary D & Wiggins, Steven N, 1985. "The Influence of Private Contractual Failure on Regulation: The Case of Oil Field Unitization," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(4), pages 690-714, August.
    17. F. H. Knight, 1924. "Some Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 38(4), pages 582-606.
    18. Cohen, Wesley M. & Goto, Akira & Nagata, Akiya & Nelson, Richard R. & Walsh, John P., 2002. "R&D spillovers, patents and the incentives to innovate in Japan and the United States," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(8-9), pages 1349-1367, December.
    19. Matthew Baker & Thomas Miceli & C. F. Sirmans & Geoffrey K. Turnbull, 2001. "Property Rights by Squatting: Land Ownership Risk and Adverse Possession Statutes," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 77(3), pages 360-370.
    20. Alston, Lee J & Libecap, Gary D & Schneider, Robert, 1996. "The Determinants and Impact of Property Rights: Land Titles on the Brazilian Frontier," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 25-61, April.
    21. repec:bla:econom:v:58:y:1991:i:229:p:79-92 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Mark Schankerman, 1998. "How Valuable is Patent Protection? Estimates by Technology Field," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(1), pages 77-107, Spring.
    23. Claude Crampes & Corinne Langinier, 2002. "Litigation and Settlement in Patent Infringement Cases," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 33(2), pages 258-274, Summer.
    24. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(2), pages 124-124.
    25. Besley, Timothy, 1995. "Property Rights and Investment Incentives: Theory and Evidence from Ghana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 903-937, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Munshifwa, Ephraim Kabunda, 2023. "Institutional analysis and informal urban settlements: A proposition for a new institutionalist grounded property rights perspective," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    2. James Bessen, 2010. "Communicating Technical Knowledge," Working Papers 1001, Research on Innovation.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jongwook Kim & Joseph T. Mahoney, 2002. "Resource-based and property rights perspectives on value creation: the case of oil field unitization," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4-5), pages 225-245.
    2. Lueck, Dean & Miceli, Thomas J., 2007. "Property Law," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 183-257, Elsevier.
      • Dean Lueck & Thomas J. Miceli, 2004. "Property Law," Working papers 2004-04, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    3. Libecap, Gary D., 2007. "The Assignment of Property Rights on the Western Frontier: Lessons for Contemporary Environmental and Resource Policy," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(2), pages 257-291, June.
    4. Steven G. Medema, 2020. "The Coase Theorem at Sixty," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1045-1128, December.
    5. Bryan Leonard & Gary D. Libecap, 2016. "Collective Action by Contract: Prior Appropriation and the Development of Irrigation in the Western United States," NBER Working Papers 22185, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Salzberger Eli M., 2011. "The Law and Economics Analysis of Intellectual Property: Paradigmatic Shift From Incentives to Traditional Property," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 435-480, December.
    7. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269, September.
    8. Balthrop, Andrew T. & Schnier, Kurt E., 2016. "A regression discontinuity approach to measuring the effectiveness of oil and natural gas regulation to address the common-pool externality," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 118-138.
    9. GIGNOUX, Jeremie & MACOURS, Karen & WREN-LEWIS, Liam, 2015. "Impact of land administration programs on agricultural productivity and rural development: existing evidence, challenges and new approaches," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement (RAEStud), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 96(3), September.
    10. Brown Matthew & Cardiff-Hicks Brianna, 2018. "The Tragedy of the Uncommons," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(2), pages 1-22, July.
    11. Lee J. Alston & Edwyna Harris & Bernardo Mueller, 2009. "De Facto and De Jure Property Rights: Land Settlement and Land Conflict on the Australian, Brazilian and U.S. Frontiers," NBER Working Papers 15264, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gerard, David, 1998. "The development of first-possession rules in US mining, 1872-1920: theory, evidence, and policy implications," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 251-264, December.
    13. Deacon, Robert & Mueller, Bernardo, 2004. "Political Economy and Natural Resource Use," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt68g1n1v8, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    14. Nicolas Querou, 2018. "Interacting collective action problems in the commons," Working Papers halshs-01936007, HAL.
    15. repec:lic:licosd:18607 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. José António Filipe & Manuel Alberto M. Ferreira & Manuel Coelho, 2007. "The Tragedy of the Anti-Commons: A New Problem. An Application to the Fisheries," Working Papers Department of Economics 2007/16, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    17. Gary D. Libecap, 1994. "7. The Conditions for Successful Collective Action," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(4), pages 563-592, October.
    18. Elinor Ostrom, 1989. "Microconstitutional Change in Multiconstitutional Political Systems," Rationality and Society, , vol. 1(1), pages 11-50, July.
    19. Ian Keay & Cherie Metcalf, 2011. "Property Rights, Resource Access, and Long‐Run Growth," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(4), pages 792-829, December.
    20. Gary D. Libecap, 2018. "Douglass C. North: Transaction Costs, Property Rights, and Economic Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 24585, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Gary D. Libecap, 1990. "Comments on Elinor Ostrom," Rationality and Society, , vol. 2(1), pages 112-116, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    property; markets; externalities; regulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • L14 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    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:roi:wpaper:0902. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Jim Bessen (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.researchoninnovation.org .

    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.