Costs must be incurred if an owner is to enforce private property rights effectively. The authors show that, in a perfectly competitive economy, private decisions to enforce rights may result in either more or less enforcement than is socially efficient. Cases of multiple stable equilibria occur...

Distributions of income are compared under the alternative regimes of free access to, and private property in, a resource. It is shown that, in several analytically distinct cases, all those deprived of free access on conversion of a resource to private property can be better off, even though no...