Organizations and Markets

Essay Contest on Property Rights

20 February 2008 at 3:06 pm Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

My co-blogger, an enthusiast for the Coase-Alchian-Demsetz-Cheung-Barzel property-rights approach, will appreciate the topic for this year’s Sir John M. Templeton Fellowships Essay Contest, sponsored by the Independent Institute:

For decades social critics in the United States and throughout the Western world have complained that “property” rights too often take precedence over “human” rights, with the result that people are treated unequally and have unequal opportunities. Inequality exists in any society. But the purported conflict between property rights and human rights is a mirage — property rights are human rights.

— Armen Alchian, “Property Rights,” in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Are property rights human rights? How are they related? What are their similarities and differences? If property rights are human rights, why have they enjoyed fewer legal protections and intellectual champions than other human rights?

The contest is for college students and “young” college professors (sorry Nicolai). 

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Classical Liberalism, Institutions, New Institutional Economics.