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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2009
The main body of the present essay consists of a general discussion of ownership, noting some of the complications involved in attempting to give clarity to the concept of ownership. I return to this topic in the essay on the public corporation, where, among several other issues, is that of “Who owns the corporation?” The last part of this essay gives an explanation of the work of R. H. Coase when he discusses a hypothetical world in which it cost nothing to use the price system. This discussion is included here to prepare readers unfamiliar with Coase's work for Essay 7.
Markets and the price system lie at the center of economic theory, but they rest on an institution that this theory hardly touches: private ownership of resources. If people create markets in which they expect to exchange assets, they must have title to these assets. Ownership entitlement is simply presumed in much of what we call economic theory. This often is true even in discussions in which ownership is explicitly discussed. R. H. Coase, whose ideas are discussed below and in the next essay, discusses the difference, if any, in the uses made of resources if the identities of the persons who own these resources are “shuffled” in hypothetical comparisons. His discussion of this issue explicitly involves ownership. Yet, it takes the existence and nature of a private ownership system as a known given.
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