ECONOMICS literature on the evolution of property rights has increasingly emphasized the optimal timing for establishing those rights. Yoram Barzel,' Dale Mortensen,2 and Partha Dasgupta and Joseph Stiglitz,3 for example, have shown that competition among firms for the rents associated with innovative devices and ideas can lead to the dissipation of those rents in the process. When property rights and the rents therefrom are "up for grabs," it is possible for expenditures to establish rights to fully dissipate the rents, leaving the efficiency gains from privatization in question.4 Before any conclusions about the welfare gains from establishing property rights can be reached, attention must be paid to the evolutionary