My colleague Tom Hazlett and his Information Economy Project at GMU is putting on a wonderful conference this week. The public event is a debate between Michael Heller and Richard Epstein on the Gridlock Economy. Following that event is an academic conference including: Harold Demsetz, Michael Meurer, F. Scott Kieff, Adam Mossoff, Kevin Werbach, Thomas Hazlett, Gerald Faulhaber, Doug Lichtman, Robert Merges and Chris Newman.
The conference announcement describes the event as follows:
This event will explore a paradox that broadly affects the Information Economy. Property rights are essential to avoid a tragedy of the commons; defined properly, such institutions yield productive incentives for creation, conservation, discovery and cooperation. Applied improperly, however, such rights can produce confusion, wasteful rent-seeking, and a tragedy of the anti-commons.
This conference, building on Columbia University law professor Michael Heller’s book, The Gridlock Economy, tackles these themes through the lens of three distinct subjects: “patent thickets,” reallocation of the TV band, and the Google Books copyright litigation.
Disclosure: I am a Senior Fellow at the Information Economy Project. But don’t hold that against them. Check out the conference!