On the social stability of coalitional property rights regimes

We present a model of coalitional property rights (CPR) regimes regimes in which ownership of a good is attributable to coalitions of various sizes. S pecifically, for each good, we define a legal structure that specifies the legal coalitions of individuals that share a communal claim to that good. G enerally, each legal coalition may use exclusionary rules to allocate its h oldings internally. These rules allow eligible subcoalitions to recontract by expropriating some fraction of the legal coalition's endowment. We then ask: what types of CPR regimes are socially stable in the sense of having a nonempty core? We give conditions on the legal structure and the primitive s of the economy that achieve social stability in this sense. We emphasize two cases of particular interest.