The Property-Contract Balance

Dari-Mattiacci, Guerriero, and Huang (2016) (henceforth DGH), construct a model in which certain goods may be stolen from their owners (O) by intermediaries (or thieves) (I) and be sold to buyers (B). In these and similar circumstances, the law (if the stolen good can be identified) may take the good from the buyer and assign it to its previous owner (henceforth pro-owner rules), or may decide to leave it where it is (henceforth pro-buyer rules). DGH study the implications of their model, and thereby conclude that the normative desirability of pro-buyer versus pro-owner rules hinges primarily on who values the good most. Below, I provide comments regarding DGH\u27s model and their interpretation of it. While doing so, I make frequent references to the notation and results described in DGH. This makes reading DGH a prerequisite to following my comments