Journal of Political Economy Vol. 129 No. 4 2021

Securing Property Rights

A. Patrick Behrer¹; Edward L. Glaeser^2,3; Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto^4,5,6,7; Andrei Shleifer^2,3

¹ Stanford University · ² National Bureau of Economic Research · ³ Harvard University · ⁴ Universitat Pompeu Fabra · ⁵ Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional · ⁶ Centre for Economic Policy Research · ⁷ Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract

A central challenge in securing property rights is the subversion of justice. We present a model of a polluter whose discharges harm multiple owners, and we compare property rules, liability rules, and regulation on efficiency grounds. We provide conditions under which property rules are preferred to liability rules, thus verifying the Calabresi-Melamed conjecture. Regulation that enforces partial abatement may be preferred to either of the extreme rules. An empirical analysis of water quality in the United States before and after the Clean Water Act shows that the effects of regulation are consistent with several predictions of the model.

DOI

10.1086/712733

Volume

129

Issue

4

Pages

1157-1192

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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