North, a Nobel Prize-winning economic historian, asserts in his book Structure and Change in Economic History that when most of mankind stopped being hunter-gatherers 10, 000 years ago and settled down to farm, there was a basic shift from common property rights to exclusive ones.

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Standard economic models predict that in the absence of clearly defined property rights, such common resources will be overexploited, with individuals acting without regard for the effects of their actions on the overall pool.

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But the biggest difference between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street is that the Tea Party is bound by a common set of values based on freedom, responsibility and property rights.

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Economists (including Mr Coase) have tended to emphasise property rights as a solution to the problem of managing common resources.

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"It's scandalous that out-of-office politicians should keep official bungalows as their private property, " says Hari Dev Shourie, director of Common Cause, a consumer-rights organization.

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