POTENTIAL GAINS FROM THE ENCLOSURE OF COMMON LAND: A COMMENT

A recemt attempt has been made in this journal by Colin Baxter and Anthony Battomley to demonstrate that in modern underdeveloped countries there are potential gains from the enclosure of common land. It was their hypothesis that the source of the gains in a static situation is a particular reallocation of the factors of production. The first purpose of this paper is to suggest that this hypothesis is incorrect. The second purpose is to re‐examine the source of the gains from enclosure and to offer an alternative model which considers both the static and dynamic aspects of the economic disadvantage of communal land ownership and the economic effects of replacing it by private properly rights.