Chapter 10 identifies 21 variants of the good-faith purchase doctrine, which are often different combinations of several key factors. That said, none of the 21 schemes are the most efficient. Among the forms of good-faith purchase doctrine currently in use, the market overt rule comes closest to ex ante efficiency because original owners, merchant dealers, and consumers all have incentives to spend close to optimal costs on verification and prevention, and the movables in question are more likely to be in the hands of higher valuers. Drawing on mechanism design literature, Chapter 10 argues that when both an original owner and a consumer are non-negligent, the two parties can be assigned 50% shares of the movable in question, and an ensuing internal auction between them can ex post tease out who values the resource more. This internal auction design is inexpensive to administer.

This chapter addresses the moral justifiability of some of the international legal rules that govern cross-border trade.The primary focus is on the moral standards that ought to be used to critically evaluate those rules or proposals for their reform.Thus the chapter investigates several moral arguments for free trade, such as the claim that it provides an especially effective mechanism for alleviating poverty, and several arguments in defense of restrictions or conditions on trade, including the moral permissible of partiality to compatriots and the right of those who cooperate to make international trade possible to a fair share of the benefits it yields.The chapter concludes with an examination of the argument that the import and consumption of oil and other natural resources from countries ruled by tyrants constitutes trade in stolen goods, a violation of existing international law.