The Case for Workplace Democracy.

A concise summary statement of case for the democratic firm based on the labor theory of property (standard juridical principle of responsibility applied to property appropriation) and the inalienable rights critique of the contract for renting people (employment contract).  A version of this paper was published as: "Responsibility and Workplace Democracy."  Peace Review. Vol. 12, No. 2 (2000), 189-95.

The Democratic Firm: A "Non-Economic" Approach to the Problem of Distribution based on Property Theory and Democratic Theory.

A longer statement of the property theoretic treatment of the "problem of distribution" presented at a 1998 conference at the Brookings Institution on the Corporation and Human Capital.  The paper connects the property theoretic arguments to some of the themes in the corporate governance literature.  A much abbreviated version of the paper was published as: "The Democratic Firm: An Argument Based on Ordinary Jurisprudence."  Journal of Business Ethics. 21 (1999): 111-24.

On the Role of Capital in So-Called "Capitalism": A Property Rights Perspective on Capital Theory Controversies.

This draft paper applies descriptive property theory to neo-classical capital theory with a glance at the two-Cambridges controversies of a few years back.  It is shown how the definition of the "capitalized value of an asset"—including the standard definition of the value of a corporation—involve a basic conceptual error.  The error (called the "fundamental myth") is the implicit assumption that the product rights (positive and negative) are part and parcel of the ownership of a capital asset.  The matter is re-solved by explicitly considering how the product is appropriated in accordance with the direction of the hiring contracts (e.g., by whether capital hires labor or vice-versa) in a market economy.  Since the product is appropriated by the contractually determined hiring party and since not all future contracts have been made, it is a fallacy to assume that all future products will be appropriated by the owner of the capital assets in the formula for valuating those assets.  Ironically, Marx made the same blunder of assuming that the product was part of the capital rights (instead of being contractually determined) and thus he misnamed the system "capitalism."  A short version of the paper focusing on the Arrow-Debreu model was published as: "The Arrow-Debreu Model: How Math Can Hide a Fatal Conceptual Error."  Forum for Social Economics. 29 (2, Spring): 33-48.

On the Role of Capital in "Capitalist" and in Labor-Managed Firms.

This draft paper compares the structure of property rights in a conventional firm and a labor-managed firm with internal capital accounts (ICAs).  The ICAs solve the alleged "horizon problem" for labor-managed firms and have been long realized in practice in the Mondragon industrial cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain.  Essentially the same idea is realized in the partners' capital accounts in partnerships.