| Abstract: | Many, if not most, economies are observed to exhibit some form of collective ownership with some goods. These economies may fail to be socially stable, in the sense that the economy has an empty core; some groups may have an incentive to ‘recontract out’. We show that, for a class of economies with collective ownership, sufficient ‘specialization’ in the endowment holdings of these economies gives rise to a non-empty core, so achieving social stability. It is shown, moreover, that reductions in income inequality are consistent with social stability, to the extent that these reductions preserve or increase ‘specialization’ in the economy. Finally, we show that our notion of specialization is not limited to the privatized sector of the economy. Even in economies in which there is no privately held property, sufficient specialization guarantees that the economy is socially stable. |
