Mention of the American West usually evokes images of rough and tumble cowboys, ranchers, and outlaws. In contrast, The Not So Wild, Wild West casts America's frontier history in a new framework that emphasizes the creation of institutions, both formal and informal, that facilitated cooperation rather than conflict. Rather than describing the frontier as a place where heroes met villains, this book argues that everyday people helped carve out legal institutions that tamed the West. The authors emphasize that ownership of resources evolves as those resources become more valuable or as establishing property rights becomes less costly. Rules evolving at the local level will be more effective because local people have a greater stake in the outcome. This theory is brought to life in the colorful history of Indians, fur trappers, buffalo hunters, cattle drovers, homesteaders, and miners. The book concludes with a chapter that takes lessons from the American frontier and applies them to our modern "frontiers"-the environment, developing countries, and space exploration.

The Technology of Property Rights combines the understanding of institutions and institutional change with a discussion of the latest technologies and their influence on the measurement and monitoring of property rights. The contributors analyze specific applications for fisheries, whales, water quality, various pollutants, as well as other pressing environmental issues. No other work brings together an economic understanding of environmental issues with technological expertise in the way this volume does.

The past several decades have witnessed a growing recognition that environmental concerns are essentially property rights issues. Despite agreement that an absence of well-defined and consistently enforced property rights results in the exploitation of air, water, and other natural resources, there is still widespread disagreement about many aspects of America's property rights paradigm. The prominent contributors to Who Owns the Environment? explore numerous theoretical and empirical possibilities for remedying these problems. An important book for environmental economists and those interested in environmental policy.

The growth of transfers from miniscule to major proportion of the gross national product has resulted in a decreasing productivity, increasing allocation of resources in obtaining and maintaining transfers, as well as increasing the social tension over the legitimacy and allocation of transfers. The authors of this study trace the historical reasons for the rise of transfers, most specifically in the United States. They offer a detailed analysis of the impact of the entire constitution and its interpretation on economic activity. In their provocative conclusion they argue against the willing surrender of transfer privileges and offer in solution the suggestion that new constitutional provisions be drafted to limit the power of government to effect transfers and reestablish our economic health. For students of Economic History, Public Policy and American Government. Originally published in 1980 by the Hoover Institution Press.