Property Rights Entrepreneurship: The Drive for Product, Asset, and Resource Excludability

ABSTRACT Property rights are foundational to market economies, and entrepreneurial activity depends heavily on the excludability afforded by property rights. Yet, the role of entrepreneurs in shaping the evolution of property rights has been so thoroughly taken for granted that it often vanishes from analyses. In this paper, we highlight the role of entrepreneurs in the creation and evolution of property rights, distinguish between three types of property rights entrepreneurship (product rights, asset rights, and resource rights), and explain the entrepreneurial challenges, actions, and outcomes associated with each. As such, we offer a more nuanced understanding of the creation and evolution of property rights through an entrepreneurial lens and argue for further research at the intersection of managerial economics, entrepreneurship, and property rights theory.