What are property rights?

Question

could you explain what property rights are in detail with examples.

thanks

Answer 1

Property rights is essentially used essentially (necessary condn.) in negative sense that is right to excude someone else from using that resource..... Resources might be physical or invisible like intellectual property! Defining Property rights can cure many market failures like Tragedy of Commons, Pollutions, public good, and is a solution t pigouvian tax.......

Private property   when held in the hand of capitalists keep class structure intact.

Answer 2

Property rights vary be country, custom, and law.  Real property rights are the most mislabeled and least understood.

Title for land occupation or usage is the right to enter upon and or dwell to the exclusion of others.  Real estate taxes upon said property is essentially rent or fee for the exclusive right to occupy and or use.

Technically land can not be owned.  In reality it is rented for extended periods of time.  The value of land is a factor of its proximity within the infrastructure of the community.  The cost of occupation for locations near commercial or government activity is generally higher than areas of least commerce and or human traffic.

Complex modern societies have government agencies to limit, monitor, and suggest which activities are permissible on land locations.  Environmental impact of activities are subject to zone restrictions.  Health and pollution concerns dictate the safety guidelines of commercial, manufacturing, recreational, and residential, area designations

In some traditional societies there is no such concept as ownership of or title to land.  Here land is perceived as a natural resource similar to air and water.  Therefore it is not to be bought sold or traded.  There is usage and occupation of land subject to family or personal ability to manage, need, and the best interests of the general community.

Answer 3

****** EDIT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS *****

In environmental economics, the primary question of property rights has to do with compensation for damages caused by externalities - generally pollution but in reality anything undesireable (such as having too many boaters at a lake that spoils the view of the sunset).

One of the initial questions was how to consider property rights - for example, do we assume that a manufacturer has a right to pollute, or that a town has the right to be free of pollution. If the former is true, then the property right of pollution can be purchased from the manufacturer for a given price. If the latter is true, then the town has the right to be free of pollution, and it is the manufacturer that should compensate the town for the cost of pollution.

Ronald Coase - in the now-famous Coase Theorem - stated that it didn't matter to whom property rights were assigned, the resolution would be efficient (ie, both parties would be better off) if they were allowed to negotiate, had full information about both parties and had no transaction costs.

Other well-used examples include that of species conservation and incentives. If a negative incentive is given - say a fine for a logging company that falls trees within so many miles of a Spotted Owl habitat - there is an incentive to not conserve the birds - and in fact to destroy them. If a positive incentive is given in the form of ownership, on the other hand, say that a tax break is given the company for every Spotted Owl that lives within the loggable area alloted to the company, then the species will thrive. Some would object that the logging company would take action to help the the birds proliferate so as to take advantage of the tax break - and indeed this is the very goal that is desired.

A similar case is brought for farmers; there is a movement among environmental economists (Teitelbaum of Amherst among them) to consider farmers' production as being land conservation rather in addition to crop production.  The idea is that farmers can be assigned the property rights to a region of land with the stipulation that they will be awarded for achieving certain goals, such as low concentration of fertilizer runoff in the effluent (like if a river goes through the land), or a certain stable level of fish or marshbirds in the habitat.

The difficulty in all of these examples is that of forming a market, because in environmental economics, property does not have value unless it can be traded in a market. Theoretically, a market can exist for any goods, no matter how abstract. This is the idea behind carbon offsets. You buy a car, you pay $300 to offset the carbon emission. Likewise, a market could possibly be set up to support the buying and selling of land management services from a farmer, or for buying and selling the right to pollute. In practical terms, the right to pollute is more often bought and sold ( you may have heard of "cap and trade" systems for dealing with carbon dioxide emissions), which means that the property right is that of living without pollution, which polluters must then buy from citizens. While such a market generally allows a reasonable cost per ton of C02 to be figured among manufacturers, because citizens do not directly take part in such markets, it is impossible to know whether the value of the citizens' property rights to not having pollution are being adequately assessed.

I know this is probably more complicated than you were hoping for. I've attached two suggested books for your perusal.

****** END EDIT - ORIGINAL RESPONSE FOLLOWS *****

A very broad question.

Property rights are, broadly, the protections provided for those who own property. They vary from country to country. In capitalism, property rights are deeply respected and private ownership is considered essential to the function of the economic system. In communism, property rights in terms of private ownership are considered a hinderance to the well-being of all, and so private ownership is mitigated to some extent.

In economics, property rights are considered important in terms of incentives. If you are not allowed to own what you earn, what reason is there to work? Such is the argument of conservative economists (and most Keynesian, Neo-Classical and Neo-Keynesians), while Marxists take the standpoint that private ownership invariably produces class warfare as the owners of property tend to gain power and seek to own more property to the detriment of the property-less.

This often comes up in terms of tax law, since taxation is essentially the appropriation by an authority of some sort of a citizen's property.

Environmental economics has a great deal of discussion on property rights, in particular in terms of resolving problems that come from public ownership of lands - the famous Coase Theorem and the Tragedy of the Commons are two well-studied examples of property rights in this regard.

This is a huge topic - I've actually written papers on this while in grad school. If you could post anything more specific that you'd like or what you're looking for, I could probably be of bigger help.