Access Restricted to Northwestern Law Community4/21/01
| April 21-22 It has been 35 years since Harold Demsetz wrote his influential article Toward a Theory of Property Rights, in which he set forth a simple economic framework for understanding the evolution of property rights. Demsetz hypothesized that property rights in resources arise when external changes in demand or technology cause the benefits of establishing new exclusion rights to exceed the costs. Knowledge of the Demsetz perspective, though far from universal, has gradually permeated economics departments and law schools. Many commentators have drawn upon the Demsetz framework for understanding property rights in their work. Yet some remain unconvinced that Demsetz was correct. Because it takes a model to beat a model, one question the conference will take up is whether there are rival hypotheses that provide a better explanation for changes in property rights over time. For example, can public choice's interest-group perspective supply a superior explanation for the emergence of new property rights? Alternatively, assuming that the Demsetz hypothesis is a useful one, it is still not the final word. Any hypothesis must adopt assumptions that abstract away from the details of real life, and there is always at least the potential for further progress as the initial assumptions are relaxed or changed. The conference will accordingly include both critiques and extensions of the initial Demsetz hypothesis. In addition to considering theoretical issues, the conference will consider several historical and contemporary case studies that shed empirical light on the model. In particular, although Demsetz focused on situations in which changes in the benefits and costs of exclusion lead to resources being moved from open access status to private ownership, the conference will also examine circumstances in which the relative change in benefit and cost is the reverse, and will ask whether this leads to a movement away from private ownership back to open access status. Saturday, April 21 8:00-8:45 a.m. 8:45-9:00 a.m. 9:00-10:30 a.m. Discussant: Carol Rose, Yale University The Extermination and Conservation of the American Bison Discussant: David A. Dana, Northwestern University Moderator: Fred McChesney, Northwestern University 10:30-11:00 a.m. 11:00-12:30 a.m. Entrepreneurs and Property Rights Discussant: Robert Ellickson, Yale Universtiy Moderator: Richard Brooks, Northwestern University School of Law 12:30-2:00 p.m. 2:00-3:30 p.m. Discussant: Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago Public Property and Private Parking: Privatization of a Peculiar
Commons Moderator: Thomas Ulen, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana 3:30-4:00 p.m. 4:00-4:45 p.m. Discussant: Thráinn Eggertsson, University of Iceland and Moderator: Kathryn Spier, Northwestern University Sunday, April 22 9:00-10:30 a.m. The (Interest Group) Case Against Private Propery Moderator: David Haddock, Northwestern University 10:30-11:00 a.m. 11:00-11:45 a.m. Moderator: Henry Smith, Northwestern University
noon-1:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m. |
