American Economic Review Vol. 98 No. 3 2008
Historical Property Rights, Sociality, and the Emergence of Impersonal Exchange in Long-Distance Trade
Abstract
This laboratory experiment explores the extent to which impersonal exchange emerges from personal exchange with opportunities for long-distance trade. We design a three-commodity production and exchange economy in which agents in three geographically separated villages must develop multilateral exchange networks to import a good only available abroad. For treatments, we induce two distinct institutional histories to investigate how past experience with property rights affects the evolution of specialization and exchange. We find that a history of unenforced property rights hinders our subjects' ability to develop the requisite personal social arrangements to support specialization and effectively exploit impersonal long-distance trade.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.98.3.1009
- Volume
- 98
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1009-1039
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref