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1 results

  • 11 - Benefits of the Public Domain

  • Yoram Barzel, University of Washington, Douglas W. Allen, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia
  • Book:
    Economic Analysis of Property Rights
    Published online:
    17 August 2023
    Print publication:
    31 August 2023, pp 205-216

  • Summary

    One of the greatest placements of wealth into the public domain was the US federal governments decision to issue large land grants to railroads and many small land grants to homesteaders in the nineteenth century. These lands were enormous in size, and putting them in the public domain induced a massive rush to get them. This chapter argues that the government wanted the lands to be taken and occupied, and that this was the benefit of placing them in the public domain, even though the racing was costly and they could have sold the lands.