EXISTENCE OF AN EQUILIBRIUM OF PROPERTY-RIGHTS

I study the existence of an equilibrium of private property rights in social systems where individual agents decide to make individual or co llective gifts according to their individual preferences on the distri bution of private consumption expenditures. It is proved that the dist ributive core is non-empty whenever there exists, at any feasible dist ribution of wealth, at least one agent in local unsympathetic isolatio n. The: equality of property rights is in the distributive core if the agents have common opinions on the acceptable orientation of wealth t ransfers implying that redistributive transfers, when they exist, flow down the scale of wealth. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.