Economics is a matter of choice and growth, of interaction and exchange among individuals. Because property rights define the rules of these interactions and the objects of exchange, it is vital to fully understand the institutions and implications of the various property-rights regimes. With...

Economic analysis of natural resource and environmental issues inappropriately places too much emphasis on Pigouvian externalities and too little on Coasean property rights and transaction costs. The crucial questions are who has what property rights and what are the transaction costs associated...

The authors argue that efficient water allocation is possible through markets as long as water rights are well-defined, enforced, and transferable. They provide a framework for considering third-party and free rider affects from water trades. From this framework, they consider the prospects for...

We show that grandfathering fishing rights to local users or recognizing first possessions is more dynamically efficient than auctions of such rights. It is often argued that auctions allocate rights to the highest-valued users and thereby maximize resource rents. We counter that rents are not...

This essay argues that the focus of ecology and economics on equilibria and externalities misses the dynamic connection between humans and nature and that there is a better alternative for linking ecology with economics, one that builds on the teachings of Nobel laureates Friedrich Hayek and...

This paper reviews the literature on economic development as it relates to indigenous people in the United States and Canada, and focuses on how institutions affect economic development of reservation and reserve economies. Evidence shows that strong property rights to reservation and reserve...

At the core of environmental economics is the potential for a divergence between private and social costs (based on the work of A. C. Pigou) and the potential for private contracts to shrink this divergence (based on the work of Ronald Coase). A close examination of Pigou and Coase reveals that...