This chapter shows how thin the legal-economic analysis of property law has been and responds to a few particular arguments in that field, including arguments about the general structure of property law, adverse possession, and dead-hand control.

Chapter 3 focuses on the numerus clausus principle and the limited property rights. It first documents that about a quarter of jurisdictions explicitly adopt this principle, while many others do so implicitly. Chapter 3 argues that this principle is generally efficient. Chapter 3 will also show that property forms such as mortgage (called hypothec in civil law) and real easement are extremely popular.

Imagine a proposal for legal reform aiming to simplify and clarify property law, which recommends the adoption of two simple rules. The first rule prescribes that owners have an in rem right to exclude. The second empowers owners (if more than one) contractually to set up their own governance regime. This bill would obviously be radically incomplete, but is that all that is wrong with it? We could think of convenient additions, but is there anything fundamentally necessary still missing for this bill to constitute at least the core of a property regime in a liberal polity?