ABSTRACT
The rules governing rights pertaining to property are among the most important structural determinants of economic behavior and performance. Yet until comparatively recently, economists have tended to pay relatively scant attention to this relationship. 1 While the reasons for this neglect are many, Ronald Coase (1960) has shown us that, within the neoclassical paradigm, this neglect is eminently justifiable; to wit, the structure of property rights does not influence the allocation of resources under standard neoclassical assumptions. The fact that Coase was correct does not obviate the general inapplicability of the result, 2 rendering it necessary to attempt to come to grips with the relationship between property and economy and, by extension, between property and government.
