Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover

Institution.

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My guest today is Richard Epstein, the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor

of Law at the University of Chicago, and the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at

Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

His latest book is Overdose, How Excessive Government Regulations Stifles Pharmaceutical

Innovation from Yale University Press.

Richard, welcome back to Econ Talk.

Oh, it's very nice to be here.

Let's start off with a discussion of property rights generally and patents in particular

and how they apply to the pharmaceutical industry.

What's the case for patents?

Well, I think if you want to start off with the question of property rights generally,

you sort of ask the question more generically, which is what's the case to private property

altogether?

And there are many economists I think who used to say that the only good resources of

those which were subject to private ownership, but it seems pretty clear that when you look

...