The Ecological and Civil Mainsprings of Property: An Experimental Economic History of Whalers’ Rules of Capture

Abstract

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18 th and 19 th century 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 lead to different rules of capture. Holding everything else constant, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely that the members of the community are civil-minded.

Thou shalt not steal: Taking aversion with legal property claims

“…Finally, we shall mention the existence of a related experimental body of literature focusing on property rights (Kimbrough, Smith, andWilson, 2008, 2010;Crockett, Smith, and Wilson, 2009;Wilson, Jaworski, Schurter, and Smyth, 2012; Jaworski and Wilson, 2013). In contrast with our paper and the literature on the dictator game cited above, these rather complex experiments focus on the strategic interaction of players and study the conditions under which property rights, specialization, and trade develop.…”

The Logic of Collective Action and beyond

“…Simulation studies of population dynamics are consistent with this conclusion, as in Axelrod (1984) and Vanberg and Congleton (1992). Experimental evidence that such group-enhancing propensities exist is provided in Wilson et al (2012). In their experiments, clusters of "civil-minded" group members tended to realize higher rewards than their less civil counterparts in otherwise similar circumstances.…”

The Meaning of Deceive in Experimental Economic Science

“…After each period you will be re-paired." 9 My co-authors and I adopted a similar one-time matching mechanism in Wilson, Jaworski, Schurter, and Smyth (2012). Our instructions said nothing about how the participants were matched (and not one of 144 participants at two different universities ever asked).…”

“…My reply is to simply reread the relevant sentences from the instructions. 11 One referee for Wilson, Jaworski, Schurter, and Smyth (2012) expressed his or her concern thusly: "A more pertinent issue would seem to concern whether or not telling subjects how their groups are formed is a deceptive practice or at least something that spells long run loss of control. It seems to me what is done is OK, but perhaps questionable.…”