Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:40:24.809Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Property as complex interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2017

HENRY E. SMITH
HENRY E. SMITH*
Affiliation:
Harvard Law School
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In his important article, Benito Arruñada draws out the significance of sequential exchange for property rights and traces inadequacies in the economics of property rights to its overly contractual focus, to the exclusion of multiple transactions on the same asset. In this comment, I argue that although Arruñada's problem is a genuine one, it is part of a larger inadequacy in the economic analysis of property rights: property institutions have to manage complexity stemming from many kinds of interactions, making it problematic to focus solely on local interactions. Modular structures in property, including legal ‘things’ themselves, serve to manage this complexity. The larger problem of complexity allows us to set sequential exchange in its proper context.

Type
Comments
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 809 - 814
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arruñada, Benito (2017) ‘Property as sequential exchange: The forgotten limits of private contract’, published online. DOI: 10.1017/S1744137416000473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, C. Y. and Clark, K. B. (2000). Design Rules: The Power of Modularity, Vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Caballero, R. J. and Simsek, A. (2013). ‘Fire sales in a model of complexity’, Journal of Finance, 68: 2549–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calabresi, G. (1970). The Costs of Accidents, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Coase, R. H. (1960), ‘The problem of social cost’, Journal of Law and Economics, 3: 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demsetz, H. (1969). ‘Information and efficiency: another viewpoint’, Journal of Law and Economics, 12 (1): 1–22.Google Scholar
Friedman, D. (1994). ‘A positive account of property rights’, Social Philosophy and Policy, 11 (2): 1–16.Google Scholar
Hansmann, H. and Kraakman, R. (2000), ‘The essential role of organizational law’, Yale Law Journal, 110 (3): 387–440.Google Scholar
Krier, J. and Serkin, C. (2015). ‘The possession heuristic’, in Chang, Y.-C. (ed.), The Law and Economics of Possession, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 149–74.Google Scholar
Langlois, R. N. (2002). ‘Modularity in technology and organization’, Journal of Economic Behavior, 49 (1): 19–37.Google Scholar
Lee, B. A. and Smith, H. E. (2012). ‘The nature of Coasean property’, International Review of Economics, 59 (2): 145–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levmore, S. (1987). ‘Variety and uniformity in the treatment of the good-faith purchaser’, Journal of Legal Studies, 16: 43–65.Google Scholar
Libecap, G. D. and Lueck, D., (2011). ‘The demarcation of land and the role of coordinating property institutions’, Journal of Political Economy, 119 (3): 426–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merrill, T. W. and Smith, H. E. (2000). ‘Optimal standardization in the law of property: the Numerus Clausus principle’, Yale Law Journal, 110 (1): 1–70.Google Scholar
Merrill, T. W. and Smith, H. E. (2001a). ‘The property/contract interface’, Columbia Law Review, 101 (4): 773–852.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merrill, T. W. and Smith, H. E. (2001b), ‘What happened to property in law and economics?’ Yale Law Journal, 111 (2): 357–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penner, J. E. (1997). The Idea of Property in Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, A. and Scott, R. E. (2011). ‘Rethinking the laws of good faith purchase’, Columbia Law Review, 111 (6): 1332–83.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1981). The Sciences of the Artificial, 2nd ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Smith, H. E. (2011), ‘Standardization in property law’, in Ayotte, K. and Smith, H. E. (eds), Research Handbook on the Economics of Property Law, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 148–73.Google Scholar
Smith, H. E. (2012). ‘Property as the law of things’, Harvard Law Review, 125: 1691–726.Google Scholar
Smith, H. E. (2015). ‘The elements of possession’, in Chang, Y.-C. (ed.), The Law and Economics of Possession, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 65–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar