The Evolution of Resource Property Rights

Abstract

Abstract This book reacts to an economic literature which relies on theory to explain property rights. To correct this truistic approach the book traces the actual evolution by examining when, where, and how particular rights have acquired one or more of six characteristics. Coverage begins, for most resources, with rights acquired in the Norman Conquest, and examines their evolution in England and the US, as well as Canada and Australia. It is emphasized that it was the accumulation of these characteristics that made property rights more ‘complete’. The book is divided into four main parts. Each part surveys the history of individual rights held by owners and users of one of four natural resources: flowing water, fisheries, minerals, and timber. Coal and petroleum rights get their own chapter. Ocean fisheries' rights are an example. For centuries fishing had been ‘common property’. Government reinforced a public right of fishing with such enactments as Magna Carta. Nevertheless, since the nineteenth century most fishermen's rights have obtained some of the exclusivity characteristic. The book identifies episodes featuring a ‘demand’ for increases in a right's characteristics or/and a increase in ‘supply’ by courts, government, and custom. Half the resource chapters are devoted to rights to use public (Crown) lands; half are devoted to private rights on private lands.

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