The California Gold Rush: A Study of Emerging Property …

EXPLORATIONS IN ECONOMIC HISTORY 14, 197-226 (1977) The California gold rush : A Study of Emerging Property Rights* JOHN UMBECK Department of Economics, Purdue University INTRODUCTION For over 2000 years political philosophers, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists have sought an explanation for the emergence of private Property rights (I). More recently, economists have joined in the search (2). This paper was written to present some of my own ideas on the subject, ideas which hopefully the reader will regard as an advance in our under- standing of a complex subject. The concept of Property rights is not an easy one to define unambigu- ously. The key to understanding it is probably to be found in the notion of exclusivity. For an individual or group of individuals to claim a right to some Property they must first be able to exclude all other potential claimants.

THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH 199 Gold , E I/ ) 0 A K B Labor Effort Gold Land FIGURE 1. of this extra labor, the first miner will perceive a decline in his MP, causing him to reduce his labor effort.

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