Before government officials try to promote economic efficiency by selling off federally owned marine land, they should first get clarity on the precise meanings of ‘efficiency’ and ‘privatization.’ They should also reconsider the assumptions that guided the 1953 federal law nationalizing approximately 1.7 billion acres off the Pacific Coast, Alaskan coast, Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Coast.

John Brätland is an economist with the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C.
EconomyEnergy and the EnvironmentEnvironmental Law and RegulationFree Market EconomicsLand UseNatural Resources
Other Independent Review articles by John Brätland
Summer 2010 Capital Concepts as Insights into the Maintenance and Neglect of Infrastructure
Winter 2007/08 Resource Exhaustibility: A Myth Refuted by Entrepreneurial Capital Maintenance
Spring 2004 Externalities, Conflict, and Offshore Lands: Resolution Through the Institutions of Private Property