ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how a comparative institutional approach to law and economics can help make the meaningful alternatives known to society. The contemporary study of social norms has become an important element of modern law and economics and, thus, must be incorporated into any study of comparative institutional analysis. From a policy standpoint, the primary difficulty in promulgating working rules lies in trying to design political-legal-economic institutions so as to provide the decisionmakers the proper incentives to correctly channel behavior so as to attain the desired performance. A comparative institutional approach to law and economics must not fall victim to the tendency toward single institutionalism, narrowly advocating for public sector remedies or for private sector remedies. The chapter considers the notion of four distinct property right systems or regimes such as the market sector, the public sector, the communal sector, and the open-access resource sector for organizing and controlling the allocation of society's scarce resources.
