Private Property Rights, Erroneous Interpretations, Morality and Economics: Reply to Demsetz

Abstract

Professor Harold Demsetz and I have been involved in an intellectual dispute which has taken place over several years. I can hardly have a better debating partner. He is easily amongst the half dozen or so most eminent economists who has not (yet) won the Nobel Prize in this discipline. To say that his contributions to the theory of property rights, regulation, law and economics, to mention only a few of the areas on which he has focused his attention, are highly regarded within the profession would be a vast understatement. Most important of all to me, he is one of the very few eminent economists who has been willing to engage me in intellectual combat.