The Property Right Paradigm

TLDR

Economics textbooks frame social choice as three questions—what to produce, how to produce, and who gets it—but this formulation is misleading because societies cannot predefine detailed answers. The study argues that viewing a social system as relying on techniques, rules, or customs to resolve conflicts over scarce resources is more useful and realistic than assuming societies predefine resource uses.

Abstract

Economics textbooks invariably describe the important economic choices that all societies must make by the following three questions: What goods are to be produced? How are these goods to be produced? Who is to get what is produced? This way of stating social choice problems is misleading. Economic organizations necessarily do resolve these issues in one fashion or another, but even the most centralized societies do not and cannot specify the answer to these questions in advance and in detail. It is more useful and nearer to the truth to view a social system as relying on techniques, rules, or customs to resolve conflicts that arise in the use of scarce resources rather than imagining that societies specify the particular uses to which resources will be put.