IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/exehis/v42y2005i2p155-183.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Order without law? Property rights during the California gold rush

Author

Listed:
  • Clay, Karen
  • Wright, Gavin

Abstract

The paper reconsiders the nature of mining districts and property rights during the California gold rush. According to a widely accepted view advanced by Umbeck (1977, 1981), in the absence of effective legal authority, district codes established secure property rights in mining claims. Such accounts neglect essential aspects of the economic context, specifically that the gold rush approximated an open-access race for a small number of high value deposits. We show that mining district codes gave equal attention to the rights of claim-jumpers as to claim holders, a balance that in practice generated chronic insecurity and litigation. A simple game-theoretic model illustrates stylized features of the situation.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Clay, Karen & Wright, Gavin, 2005. "Order without law? Property rights during the California gold rush," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 155-183, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:42:y:2005:i:2:p:155-183
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014-4983(04)00079-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Introduction to "Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-1860"," NBER Chapters, in: Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-1860, pages 1-5, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Richard O. Zerbe, 2001. "Economic Efficiency in Law and Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1992.
    3. Greif, Avner, 1993. "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: the Maghribi Traders' Coalition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 525-548, June.
    4. Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-1860," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number marg00-1.
    5. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1976. "Monopoly and the Rate of Extraction of Exhaustible Resources," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(4), pages 655-661, September.
    6. Zerbe, Richard O. & Anderson, C. Leigh, 2001. "Culture And Fairness In The Development Of Institutions In The California Gold Fields," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 61(1), pages 114-143, March.
    7. Partha Dasgupta & Joseph Stiglitz, 1980. "Uncertainty, Industrial Structure, and the Speed of R&D," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(1), pages 1-28, Spring.
    8. Harold Hotelling, 1931. "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 137-137.
    9. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 9, pages 178-203, Palgrave Macmillan.
    10. Anderson, Terry L & Hill, Peter J, 1990. "The Race for Property Rights," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 177-197, April.
    11. Wright, Brian Davern, 1983. "The Economics of Invention Incentives: Patents, Prizes, and Research Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 691-707, September.
    12. Barzel,Yoram, 1997. "Economic Analysis of Property Rights," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521597135, February.
    13. Lueck, Dean, 1995. "The Rule of First Possession and the Design of the Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 393-436, October.
    14. David, Paul A & Wright, Gavin, 1997. "Increasing Returns and the Genesis of American Resource Abundance," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 6(2), pages 203-245, March.
    15. 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.
    16. H. Scott Gordon, 1954. "The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(2), pages 124-124.
    17. Clay, Karen, 1997. "Trade without Law: Private-Order Institutions in Mexican California," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 202-231, April.
    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. Ignace Adant & Pierre Fleckinger, 2005. "Controling externalities with asymmetric information : Ferrous Scrap Recycling and the Gold Rush Problem," Working Papers hal-00243017, HAL.
    2. Bryan Leonard & Gary D. Libecap, 2016. "Collective Action by Contract: Prior Appropriation and the Development of Irrigation in the Western United States," NBER Working Papers 22185, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Gérard Gaudet, 2007. "Natural resource economics under the rule of Hotelling," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1033-1059, November.
    4. Libecap, Gary D., 2007. "The Assignment of Property Rights on the Western Frontier: Lessons for Contemporary Environmental and Resource Policy," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 67(2), pages 257-291, June.
    5. Stewart, James I., 2009. "Cooperation when N is large: Evidence from the mining camps of the American West," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 213-225, March.
    6. Lueck, Dean & Miceli, Thomas J., 2007. "Property Law," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 183-257, Elsevier.
      • Dean Lueck & Thomas J. Miceli, 2004. "Property Law," Working papers 2004-04, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    7. Terry L. Anderson & Ragnar Arnason & Gary D. Libecap, 2010. "Efficiency Advantages of Grandfathering in Rights-Based Fisheries Management," NBER Working Papers 16519, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Brown Matthew & Cardiff-Hicks Brianna, 2018. "The Tragedy of the Uncommons," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(2), pages 1-22, July.
    9. Amitrajeet A. Batabyal & Henk Folmer, 2019. "Space and the environment: an introduction to the topical collection," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 1-7, April.
    10. Gaston Clément Nyassoke Titi & Jules Sadefo Kamdem & Louis Aimé Fono, 2022. "Optimal renewable resource harvesting model using price and biomass stochastic variations: a utility based approach," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 95(2), pages 297-326, April.
    11. Smith, Martin D. & Sanchirico, James N. & Wilen, James E., 2009. "The economics of spatial-dynamic processes: Applications to renewable resources," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 104-121, January.
    12. Armelle Mazé & Claude Ménard, 2010. "Private ordering, collective action, and the self-enforcing range of contracts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 131-153, February.
    13. Neudert, Regina & Rühs, Michael, 2013. "The Race for Leasing Rights: Pasture Access and Institutional Change During Post-socialist Reforms in Azerbaijan," Institutional Change in Agriculture and Natural Resources Discussion Papers 148489, Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    14. Bhattacharya, Haimanti & Lueck, Dean, 2009. "The role of property rights in determining the environmental quality-income relationship," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 2511-2524, August.
    15. Behringer, Stefan & Upmann, Thorsten, 2014. "Optimal harvesting of a spatial renewable resource," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 105-120.
    16. Ben White, 2000. "A Review of the Economics of Biological Natural Resources," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 419-462, September.
    17. Lueck, Dean, 1995. "The Rule of First Possession and the Design of the Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 393-436, October.
    18. Charles Morcom & Michael Kremer, 2000. "Elephants," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 212-234, March.
      • Michael Kremer & Charles Morcom, 1996. "Elephants," NBER Working Papers 5674, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Kremer, M. & Morcom, C., 1996. "Elephants," Working papers 96-17, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    19. Roth, M. Garrett & Skarbek, David, 2014. "Prison Gangs and the Community Responsibility System," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 1(3), pages 223-243, May.
    20. van der Ploeg, Frederick, 2020. "Race to burn the last ton of carbon and the risk of stranded assets," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    More about this item

    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:eee:exehis:v:42:y:2005:i:2:p:155-183. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622830 .

    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.