Productivity Change, Public Goods and Transaction Costs presents in one definitive volume a selection of Yoram Barzel's acclaimed articles and papers. It will improve access to his many important contributions and reveals how his research interests have evolved over more than three decades. Focusing upon issues in microeconomics, this volume features pathbreaking articles and papers on production functions and productivity, optimal timing, labour, public choice, industrial organization, demand analysis, and property rights and transaction costs. Key contributions featured in this collection include 'Some Observations on the Index Number Problem', 'An Alternative Approach to the Analysis of Taxation', 'An Economic Analysis of Slavery' and 'Measurement Cost and the Organization of Markets'. As an introduction to this volume, Professor Barzel has prepared an autobiographical sketch in which he discusses his education, the development of his ideas and influences such as Don Patinkin, Douglass North and Aaron Director.

The standard neoclassical model of economics is incapable of explaining why one form of organization arises over another. It is a model where transaction costs are implicitly assumed to not exist; however, transaction costs are here defined as the costs of strengthening a given distribution of economic property rights, and they always exist. Economic Analysis of Property Rights is a study of how individuals organise resources to maximise the value of their economic rights over these resources. It offers a unified theoretical structure to deal with exchange, rights formation, and organisation that traditional economic theory often ignores. It explains how transaction costs can be reduced through reorganization and, in the end, how the distribution of property rights that exists is the one that maximizes wealth net of these transaction costs. This necessary hypothesis explains much of the puzzling organizations and institutions that exist now and have existed in the past.

The standard neoclassical model of economics is incapable of explaining why one form of organization arises over another. It is a model where transaction costs are implicitly assumed to not exist; however, transaction costs are here defined as the costs of strengthening a given distribution of economic property rights, and they always exist. Economic Analysis of Property Rights is a study of how individuals organise resources to maximise the value of their economic rights over these resources. It offers a unified theoretical structure to deal with exchange, rights formation, and organisation that traditional economic theory often ignores. It explains how transaction costs can be reduced through reorganization and, in the end, how the distribution of property rights that exists is the one that maximizes wealth net of these transaction costs. This necessary hypothesis explains much of the puzzling organizations and institutions that exist now and have existed in the past.

This book models the emergence and evolution of the rule-of-law state. The protector or ruler is assumed to be self-seeking. Individuals will install a protector only after they create institutions to control him. Organized protection engenders legal institutions that enforce rights. A "state of nature" then gradually turns into a rule-of-law state. Individuals employ both the state and other third parties for enforcement. The fraction of agreements that the state enforces determines its scope. Rule-of-law states encourage market transactions and standards that facilitate trade. The larger the domain of the state's ultimate enforcer, the greater the advantage of scale economies to contracting. This force may explain the creation of rule-of-law empires.

This book models the emergence and evolution of the rule-of-law state. The protector or ruler is assumed to be self-seeking. Individuals will install a protector only after they create institutions to control him. Organized protection engenders legal institutions that enforce rights. A "state of nature" then gradually turns into a rule-of-law state. Individuals employ both the state and other third parties for enforcement. The fraction of agreements that the state enforces determines its scope. Rule-of-law states encourage market transactions and standards that facilitate trade. The larger the domain of the state's ultimate enforcer, the greater the advantage of scale economies to contracting. This force may explain the creation of rule-of-law empires.