Approximate Optimality of Aboriginal Property Rights

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

IN contrast to the relatively rich literature, enlightened by many cases, on property rights in modern societies, the corresponding literature by economists on aboriginal societies is peremptory and uninformed by interdisciplinary studies. This relatively brief literature is enlightened by only a few case studies and concrete examples. Both the analysis and its credibility can be improved by more use of relevant data, covering a wider variety of cases. This article undertakes such an endeavor, using the observations of anthropologists of the diverse set of rights, customs, and practices of over fifty aboriginal peoples. The cases considered here include peoples who used their group territories for hunting and fishing; for gathering wild roots, fruit, vegetables, and invertebrates; and (sometimes) for primitive horticulture. Among the studied groups, one observes almost all conceivable structures of rights. The study of aboriginals can make especially clear the advantages of one type of property right over another because, in most cases, these people lived at the margin of subsistence. In more developed societies, departures from optimality mean lower living standards and lower growth rates-luxuries these societies can afford. By contrast, in societies near the margin of subsistence, with populations under Malthusian control, such departures had harsher effects, which one would expect to see reflected in the surviving societies. Unsound rights structures generally implied lower population size and, perhaps, the disappearance of the society. (Where the balance of advantage and disadvantage between alternative institutions was reasonably close, however, more than one could be found.) One therefore expects the data on aboriginals to provide relatively direct evidence on the structure of an optimal system of property