Issues such as the patentability of scientific ideas, the market for organs and open source software are hotly debated and yet poorly understood. In particular, there is a great need for sound economic theorizing on such issues.
There is also a need for a clear and concise exposition of the state-of-the-art of the economics of property rights. This book fulfils these various needs.
Introduction 1: Property Rights Dynamics: Current Issues in Law and Economics Part I: Property Rights and Law and Economic Theory: Justifications and Main Issues 2: The Fall and Rise of Functional Property 3: Property Rights: A Comparative Law and Economics Perspective in the Global Era 4: Entropy and the Asymmetric Coase Theorem 5: On Incomplete Property: A Missing Point Perspective in Law and Economics? Part II: An Old Bottle for New Wines? The Extensions of Property Rights 6: Intellectual Property and the Efficient Allocation of Social Surplus from Innovations 7: The Uninvited Guest: Patents on Wall Street 8: Property Rights in Human Tissue Part III: Shadows and Lights: Critical Issues, Conflicting Cases and Alternative Paradigms 9: The Ongoing Copyright as an Essential Facility Saga 10: The Treatment of Marital Assets: Common-Law Property Rights and EU Harmonization 11: Intellectual Property Rights and Judge-Made Law: An Economic Analysis of the Production and Diffusion of Precedent 12: Failing Property Rights: The Problem of Sleeping Owners in the City: A Preliminary Analysis of One Aspect of the German Unification Treaty