@article{83a6f07955654566afe0d0d9d29db25b,
title = "The ecological and civil mainsprings of property: An experimental economic history of whalers' rules of capture",
abstract = "This article uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th centuries developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their prey, the primary implication being that different ecological conditions led to different rules of capture. Ceteris paribus, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely, as Samuel Pufendorf theorized over 300 years ago, that the members of the community are civil minded.",
author = "Wilson, {Bart J.} and Taylor Jaworski and Schurter, {Karl E.} and Andrew Smyth",
note = "Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics and Chapman University. We also thank Jeffrey Kirchner for his software programming sans pareil, Elliott Kashner for his initial work on this project as part of his undergraduate independent study at George Mason University, and Pete Abbate, Joy Buchanan, Michael Gamboa, Matt McMahon, Maciej Pisarek, Matt Simpson, and Jake Troesh for their competent research assistance. Finally, we thank Doug Davis, Robert Ellickson, Erik Kimbrough, Deir-dre McCloskey, and Vernon Smith for comments that have improved the article as well as seminar and conference participants at the 2010 Southern Economic Association Meetings, the Property and Environment Research Center, Baruch College, Cal Poly State University, CERGE-EI, Florida State University, Georgia State University, and the University of Southern California. The data and source code are available upon request.",
year = "2012",
month = oct,
doi = "10.1093/jleo/ewr024",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "28",
pages = "617--656",
journal = "Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization",
issn = "8756-6222",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "4",
}