IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/dp2010/2010-27.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

"Who's the thief?": Asymmetric Information and the Creation of Property Rights

Author

Listed:
  • Philipp Denter
  • Dana Sisak

Abstract

This paper studies the creation of property rights in a state of anarchy and in the presence of uncertainty about a potential appropriator's ability. In a game of conflict, securing property can be achieved by spending resources for protection. We show that secure property rights will never emerge in equilibrium. The reason for this finding is not that it is not possible to secure property in principle, but that because of uncertainty agents will choose to protect their possessions against an expected appropriator and not against the most able one. Hence, agents voluntarily expose themselves to the risk of losing ownership. This finding has important consequences, since secure property rights are a fundamental prerequisite of economic activity, and insecure property may for example hinder the exploitation of mutually beneficial trade opportunities or distort investment and production incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • Philipp Denter & Dana Sisak, 2010. ""Who's the thief?": Asymmetric Information and the Creation of Property Rights," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2010 2010-27, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:dp2010:2010-27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2010/DP-1027-DeSi.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Halvor Mehlum & Karl Moene, 2002. "Battlefields and marketplaces," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(6), pages 485-496.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Slantchev, Branislav L., 2010. "Feigning Weakness," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(3), pages 357-388, July.
    4. Richard Hornbeck, 2010. "Barbed Wire: Property Rights and Agricultural Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 767-810.
    5. Skaperdas, Stergios, 1992. "Cooperation, Conflict, and Power in the Absence of Property Rights," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 720-739, September.
    6. Herschel I. Grossman, 2001. "The Creation of Effective Property Rights," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 347-352, May.
    7. Bush, Winston C. & Mayer, Lawrence S., 1974. "Some implications of anarchy for the distribution of property," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 401-412, August.
    8. Dani Rodrik, 2006. "Institutions for High-Quality Growth: What They Are and How to Acquire Them," Chapters, in: Kartik Roy & Jörn Sideras (ed.), Institutions, Globalisation and Empowerment, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Martin Kolmar, 2008. "Perfectly Secure Property Rights and Production Inefficiencies in Tullock Contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 75(2), pages 441-456, October.
    10. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    11. Grossman, Herschel I & Kim, Minseong, 1995. "Swords or Plowshares? A Theory of the Security of Claims to Property," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1275-1288, December.
    12. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1995. "Anarchy and Its Breakdown," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(1), pages 26-52, February.
    13. Epstein, Gil S. & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2004. "Strategic restraint in contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 201-210, February.
    14. Catherine Hafer, 2006. "On the Origins of Property Rights: Conflict and Productionin the State of Nature," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 119-143.
    15. Magnus Hoffmann, 2010. "Enforcement of property rights in a barter economy," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 34(2), pages 249-263, February.
    16. Stergios Skaperdas, 1996. "Contest success functions (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 283-290.
    17. Erica Field, 2007. "Entitled to Work: Urban Property Rights and Labor Supply in Peru," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1561-1602.
    18. Umbeck, John, 1977. "The California gold rush: A study of emerging property rights," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 197-226, July.
    19. Linster, Bruce G, 1993. "Stackelberg Rent-Seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 307-321, October.
    20. Muthoo, Abhinay, 2004. "A model of the origins of basic property rights," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 288-312, November.
    21. Umbeck, John, 1981. "Might Makes Rights: A Theory of the Formation and Initial Distribution of Property Rights," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 19(1), pages 38-59, January.
    22. Sylvain Chassang & Gerard Padró I Miquel, 2010. "Conflict and Deterrence Under Strategic Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1821-1858.
    23. Hurley, Terrance M. & Shogren, Jason F., 1998. "Effort levels in a Cournot Nash contest with asymmetric information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 195-210, June.
    24. Mehlum, Halvor & Moene, Karl & Torvik, Ragnar, 2005. "Crime induced poverty traps," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 325-340, August.
    25. de Meza, David & Gould, J R, 1992. "The Social Efficiency of Private Decisions to Enforce Property Rights," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(3), pages 561-580, June.
    26. Garfinkel, Michelle R. & Skaperdas, Stergios, 2007. "Economics of Conflict: An Overview," Handbook of Defense Economics, in: Keith Hartley & Todd Sandler (ed.), Handbook of Defense Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 649-709, Elsevier.
    27. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    28. Dixit, Avinash K, 1987. "Strategic Behavior in Contests," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 891-898, December.
    29. Esther Gal-Or, 1987. "First Mover Disadvantages with Private Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(2), pages 279-292.
    30. Baye, Michael R. & Hoppe, Heidrun C., 2003. "The strategic equivalence of rent-seeking, innovation, and patent-race games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 217-226, August.
    31. Denter, Philipp & Morgan, John & Sisak, Dana, 2011. ""Where Ignorance is Bliss, 'tis Folly to be Wise": Transparency in Contests," Economics Working Paper Series 1128, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hoffmann, Magnus & Rota-Graziosi, Grégoire, 2012. "Endogenous timing in general rent-seeking and conflict models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 168-184.
    2. María Cubel & Santiago Sanchez-Pages, 2020. "Property Out of Conflict: A Survey and Some New Results," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 130(6), pages 891-927.
    3. Philipp Denter & Dana Sisak, 2015. "The fragility of deterrence in conflicts," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 43-57, January.
    4. Hoffmann, Magnus & Rota-Graziosi, Grégoire, 2012. "Endogenous timing in general rent-seeking and conflict models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 168-184.
    5. John Boyce & David Bruner, 2012. "Property rights out of anarchy? The Demsetz hypothesis in a game of conflict," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 95-120, June.
    6. MacKenzie, Ian A. & Ohndorf, Markus, 2013. "Restricted Coasean bargaining," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 296-307.
    7. Martin Kolmar, 2015. "Costly Exclusion, Property-Rights Enforcement, and the Optimal Supply of Rival and Nonrival Goods," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 171(3), pages 405-431, September.
    8. Ansink, Erik & Weikard, Hans-Peter, 2009. "Contested water rights," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 247-260, June.
    9. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2011. "The Economics of Destructive Power," Chapters, in: Derek L. Braddon & Keith Hartley (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Conflict, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Schwarz Mordechai E., 2019. "From Jungle to Civilized Economy: The Power Foundation of Exchange Economy Equilibrium," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-14, June.
    11. Richard Cornes & Roger Hartley & Yuji Tamura, 2019. "Two‐Aggregate Games: Demonstration Using a Production–Appropriation Model," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(1), pages 353-378, January.
    12. Anderton,Charles H. & Carter,John R., 2009. "Principles of Conflict Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521875578, December.
    13. Leeson,Peter T., 2014. "Anarchy Unbound," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107025806.
    14. Rajan, Raghuram G. & Zingales, Luigi, 2000. "The tyranny of inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 521-558, June.
    15. Pelosse, Yohan, 2009. "Mediated Contests and Strategic Foundations for Contest Success Functions," MPRA Paper 18664, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Sanchez-Pages, Santiago, 2006. "On the social efficiency of conflict," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 90(1), pages 96-101, January.
    17. Antoine Pietri, 2017. "Les modèles de « rivalité coercitive » dans l’analyse économique des conflits," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 127(3), pages 307-352.
    18. Jefferson DP Bertolai & Luiz GDS Scorzafave, 2021. "Property rights’ emergence in illicit drug markets," Rationality and Society, , vol. 33(1), pages 52-105, February.
    19. Raul Caruso, 2012. "Differentials in property Rights in a two-sector economy," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 122(2), pages 257-278.
    20. Kolmar, Martin, 2005. "The contribution of Herschel I. Grossman to political economy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 802-814, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asymmetric Information; Property Rights; Conflict;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:usg:dp2010:2010-27. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martina Flockerzi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwasgch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.