This research focuses on a substantial gap between theories of institutions and property rights: institutions are accepted as complex social structures, but property rights are generally considered as simple, that is, either private or public. Although usually unacknowledged, this simplified understanding of property rights is actually based on Samuelson’s theory developed six decades ago. According to Samuelson, the inherent characteristics of goods determine whether they are privately or collectively consumed commodities. Although Samuelson does not propose a mandatory unambiguous link between types of consumption and types of ownership, his theory implies that in principle, private goods are consumed and owned privately and public goods are consumed and owned publicly. Thus, in Samuelson’s theory, institutions are redundant. This article maintains that people need institutions and organisations because resources are scarce, and most resources are too expensive for individual use/consumption. To access such resources, people form groups and create organisations and institutions, thereby reducing the individual costs of use and consumption. As complex systems, institutions generate complex property rights – common/collective to the members of an organisation, but private to that organisation (the union of members). Furthermore, institutions determine the patterns of interaction between planning and the market (as the two main mechanisms of exercising property rights) at all levels of the multilevel structure of organisations and society. The article argues that Buchanan’s theory of clubs offers a more accurate explanation of the nature of property rights as relevant to institutions.

中文翻译：

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制度和规划理论中复杂的私人共有财产权

这项研究着重于制度理论与产权理论之间的巨大差距：制度被认为是复杂的社会结构，但产权通常被认为是简单的，即私人的或公共的。尽管通常不为人所知，但是对财产权的这种简化理解实际上是基于六十年前发展起来的萨缪尔森的理论。萨缪尔森认为，商品的固有特征决定了它们是私人消费还是集体消费的商品。尽管塞缪尔森没有提出消费类型和所有权类型之间的强制性明确联系，但他的理论暗示，原则上，私人物品是私人消费和拥有，公共物品是私人消费和拥有。因此，按照萨缪尔森的理论，制度是多余的。本文认为，人们需要机构和组织，因为资源稀缺，而且大多数资源对于个人使用/消费来说太昂贵了。为了获得此类资源，人们组成了小组并创建了组织和机构，从而降低了使用和消费的个人成本。机构作为复杂的系统，会产生复杂的产权–对组织成员来说是共有/集体的，但对组织（成员联盟）而言是私有的。此外，机构在组织和社会的多层次结构的各个层次上，确定计划与市场（作为行使财产权的两个主要机制）之间相互作用的模式。