In a number of states, water can be taken from you if your well runs dry. Egers always at issue a transactions casts in their monitoring. Ownership is the way that we socially engineer who gets what and why in our society. The book explores how technology could help solve these problems.
Law professors Michael Heller and James Salzman talk about their book, Mine! with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Heller and Salzman argue that ownership is trickier and more complicated than it looks. While we tend to think of something as either mine or not mine, there's often ambiguity and a continuum about who owns what. Salzman and Heller explore a wide and surprising range of property rights from everyday life. The conversation includes a discussion of the insights of Ronald Coase on the assignment of property rights when rights conflict.