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The Evolution of Individual Property Rights in Massachusetts Agriculture, 17th–19th Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2017

Barry C. Field
Barry C. Field*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Extract

Economic studies of changes in property rights institutions have been hampered by the use of ideal types. Conceptually we usually identify a small number of discrete property rights regimes, e.g., “open-access,” “common property” and “private property,” and then try to comprehend our data in terms of these categories. But in the so-called real world ideal types are seldom encountered. Instead we usually see complex mixtures of assorted arrangements, all growing or declining or mixing or separating at different rates and in different directions. Models containing nothing but ideal-type concepts are ill-suited to the analysis of such a reality. In this paper I want to examine a case of institutional change where one institutional regime was transformed into another; not by a discrete jump from one system to another, but through a gradual process of institutional adaptation and transition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Northeastern Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , October 1985 , pp. 97 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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Footnotes

Thanks to Martha Kimball and Cleve Willis for comments on previous drafts of this paper.

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