What is known property rights?

Property rights are defined as the theoretical and legal ownership of resources and how a person can use those resources. These resources can be in both the forms tangible and intangible and can be owned by an individuals, businesses, and governments.

If we see this property rights in terms of economics then these rights are theoretical and socially enforced constructs for determining how a resource or economic good is used and owned. Resources can be owned or hence be the property of an individuals, associations, collectives, or governments and property rights can be seen as an attribute of an economic good. So basically in economics, property rights form the basis for all market exchange, and the allocation of property rights in a society affects the efficiency of resource use and  we can say that this attribute of an economic good has four broad and basic components and they are often called as a bundle of rights.

  1. The right to use the good
  2. The right to earn income from the good
  3. The right to transfer the good to others, alter it, abandon it, or destroy it ( the right to ownership cessation)
  4. The right to enforce property rights

In economics, usually property is considered to be ownership ( rights to the proceeds generated by the property) and control over resource or good. Property rights need to be fixed and need to portray the relationships among other parties in order to be more effective is reason of argument amongst many economists.

Types/Regimes of property rights

Property rights to a good must be defined, their use should be monitored, and possession of rights should be enforced. The costs of defining, monitoring, and enforcing property rights are termed transaction costs. Depending on the level of transaction costs, various forms of property rights institutions will develop and each institutional form can be described by the distribution of rights. There are four types of property rights:- Nobodies property, Public property, Common property, Private property.

Lists of property rights

1. Nobodies property-

This kind of property is not owned by anyone. This is non-excludable or we can say no one can exclude anyone else from using it), non-transferable, but may be rival (one person’s use of it reduces the quantity available to other users). Open access property is not managed by anyone, and access to it is not controlled.

  1. Public property-

Public property can be also known as state property and this is a property which is publicly owned, but its access and use are managed or controlled by a government agency or  organization granted such as authority.

  1. Common property–

Common/collective property is property that is owned by a group of peoples. Access, use, and exclusion are controlled by the joint owners. True commons can break down, but, unlike open-access property, common property owners can have very much ability to manage conflicts through shared benefits and enforcement.

  1. Private property-

Private property can be both excludable and rival. Private owner or a group of legal owners control the access, use, exclude and management of this private property.

All above property rights are clearly given and they are legally acceptable so that there should not be any kind of conflict among people of society and harmony and peace can be maintained when it comes to property rights.