Private property | EPFL Graph Search

Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or cooperative property, which is owned by one or more non-governmental entities. Private property is foundational to capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. The distinction between private and personal property varies depending on political philosophy, with socialist perspectives making a hard distinction between the two. As a legal concept, private property is defined and enforced by a country's political system. History Ideas about and discussion of private property date back to the Persian Empire, and emerge in the Western tradition at least as far back as Plato. Prior to the 18th century, English speakers generally used the word "property" in reference to land ownership. In

The Advent of the Sharing Culture and its Effect on Product Pricing

Maryam Razeghian Jahromi, Thomas Alois Weber

Empirical observations suggest that consumers' propensity towards sharing varies with culture and the individuals' socio-demographic characteristics. In an economy with overlapping generations of heterogeneous consumers, we study optimal dynamic selling by a durable-goods monopolist in equilibrium. Feasible dynamic pricing strategies include second-degree price discrimination offering intertemporal consumption bundles in the form of rental and/or purchase options. We find that as the population's peer-trade propensity increases, possibly due to a cultural shift from private ownership to collective consumption, the durable-goods monopolist's optimal strategy shifts from unbundling (offering exclusively rentals), via mixed bundling (offering the options of rental and purchase side-by-side), to pure bundling (offering purchase only). We show that an increase in peer-trade propensity has an ambiguous effect on the firm's profit. Cultural shifts from low to high peer-trade propensity may be delayed by a firm's attempts to artificially disable sharing markets by offering overly low rental rates. However, beyond a certain threshold of peer-trade propensity, the firm prefers a cultural transition to an access-based economy. The underlying reason is that the asset base of a sharing economy ultimately depends on the firm's output, so that a portion of the anticipated rents from sharing can be captured by the durable-goods monopolist.

2019

Re-imagining the collective space

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon

Reproduction can be perceived in two opposite ways from the urban planning point of view, both as a driving force and as a braking weight. Driving force because urban phenomena are precisely produced by re-producing, and especially by reproducing the fundamental relation between public space and private volumes. Strength and longevity of traditional cities usually come from continuities, and peculiarly from this elementary one. The renunciation of this substantial quality is undoubtedly one of the main criticisms addressed to the modern movement. Rediscovered at the end of the 20th century, it could again be underestimated at the dawn of this new century, characterized by reinvention, rupture and search for alternatives. Nowadays, reproduction is widely associated to a deep negative connotation: as an obstacle to personal overtaking, or a resistance to collective innovation. But according to sustainability perspectives, there are probably still lessons to be learned from the urban capacity to cross time with the same intensity. Even to support alternatives, part of continuity can be useful, by imputing historical thickness in vulnerable innovations. While keeping a critical attention, it may be appropriate, even today, to consider reproduction as an urban potentiality. As Bernardo Secchi noted in La ville des riches et la ville des pauvres, urban planning - but also architecture in the largest sense - should take advantage of the capacity of space to oppose the resistance of its own inertia to social change (SECCHI, 2013). He also attributes to space the capacity of proposing an oriented trajectory, linked to this pre-existing form. In this context, the ambiguous trajectory given by the powerful relationship between public and private space deserves to be attentively studied. A careful reading of the evolution of this central dualism reveals the relatively silent presence of a third entity: the collective space. In comparison with the importance of a third way in economic and political fields (OSTROM, 1990), architecture seems to suffer from a significant gap. This transdisciplinary approach brings to light, in the architectural domain, the theoretical discontinuity that has long been given to intermediate space, between public space and private property. The architectural challenge around its own third way has long been reduced to the gradual register, without asserting itself as a status, necessary and complementary to the other two components of urbanity. As a very ancient urban element, and relatively recurrent in the formation of cities, collective space presents both all the transcendent abilities of reproduction, but also a precious flexibility mainly linked to its absence of theoretical formulation. Let's give a new emancipated orientation to this underestimated component, overshadowed by a rooted binary reading of the city.

2018

Re-imagining the collective space

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon

A careful reading of the evolution of the central dualism opposing public and private domains reveals the relatively silent presence of a third entity: the collective space. In comparison with the importance of a third way in economic and political fields, architecture seems to suffer from a significant gap. This transdisciplinary approach brings to light, in the architectural domain, the theoretical discontinuity that has long been given to intermediate space, between public space and private property. The architectural challenge around its own third way has long been reduced to the gradual register, without asserting itself as a status, necessary and complementary to the other two components of urbanity. As a very ancient urban element, and relatively recurrent in the formation of cities, collective space presents both all the transcendent abilities of reproduction, but also a precious flexibility mainly linked to its absence of theoretical formulation. Let’s give a new emancipated orientation to this underestimated component, overshadowed by a rooted binary reading of the city.

2018

Re-imagining the collective space

Valentin Daniel Maurice Bourdon

2018