Complex private-common property rights in institutional and planning theories

Bibliographic Data

ID12710036
AuthorsAleksandar D Slaev (0000-0001-9172-5776, Varna Free University, Bulgaria, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume19
Issue2
Pages193-213
Publication date2019-09-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePlanning Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1473-0952 • E-ISSN: 1741-3052
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1473095219874832
OpenAlexW2974670426
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited41

This research focuses on a substantial gap between theories of institutions and property rights: institutions are accepted as complex social structures, but property rights are generally considered as simple, that is, either private or public. Although usually unacknowledged, this simplified understanding of property rights is actually based on Samuelson’s theory developed six decades ago. According to Samuelson, the inherent characteristics of goods determine whether they are privately or collectively consumed commodities. Although Samuelson does not propose a mandatory unambiguous link between types of consumption and types of ownership, his theory implies that in principle, private goods are consumed and owned privately and public goods are consumed and owned publicly. Thus, in Samuelson’s theory, institutions are redundant. This article maintains that people need institutions and organisations because resources are scarce, and most resources are too expensive for individual use/consumption. To access such resources, people form groups and create organisations and institutions, thereby reducing the individual costs of use and consumption. As complex systems, institutions generate complex property rights – common/collective to the members of an organisation, but private to that organisation (the union of members). Furthermore, institutions determine the patterns of interaction between planning and the market (as the two main mechanisms of exercising property rights) at all levels of the multilevel structure of organisations and society. The article argues that Buchanan’s theory of clubs offers a more accurate explanation of the nature of property rights as relevant to institutions

Business · Consumption (sociology · Economics · Law and economics · Market economy · Microeconomics · Private good · Private property · Private rights · Property (philosophy · Property rights · Public economics · Public good · Public property · Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

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