“The question of how and why water has been governed by regimes of private, public, and common property has occupied scholars for some time, often in tandem with the normative issue of which type of property regime is best for the resource. As in many other fields, economic analysis has proved to be a dominant theoretical lens for understanding the development of water rights, generating both direct insights and provoking trenchant critiques. On the level of positive theory, many have built on the framework of Harold Demsetz’s (1967) theory of property rights, according to which property regimes progress from common to private property as the increasing value of the resource in question, or pressure on it, renders the advantages of its privatization greater than the administrative costs of establishing and maintaining a private-property regime …” (more)
[David Schorr, Environment, Law, and History, 16 December]
First posted 2017-12-18 07:06:03
Leave a Reply