Working Paper No. 18. Property Rights and Economic Growth

Abstract

My main purpose is to connect the issue of property rights to the set of questions concerning economic growth and the long-term determinants of the improvements in material well-being. To anticipate what will be my main conclusion, it is that property rights and economic growth are not separable. But that statement, by itself, is not very interesting. What is important is not my eventual conclusion but how I come to arrive at that conclusion. And I should warn you in advance that I will arrive at that conclusion via an unconventional pathway, and that our guide along that pathway – at least our initial guide – will be Karl Marx.