S. Arrivazhaguy, Guest Lecturer, Government Law College, Viluppuram
Many governments have condemned the practice of “hoarding” – particularly when it comes to “essential Commodities like food. Anti – hoarding laws have been fairly common in recent times in countries like India, and such laws were equally pervasive in ancient times.1 While these laws are ubliquitous, it is difficult to define “hoarding” in a meaningful and precise way, and it is also hard to justify rules against hoarding (howere defined) on efficiency or social welfare grounds. Yet scholars regularly refer to “anti-hoarding laws as though it were obvious what is meant, and most of these scholars (including some economists) just assume, without any analysis or justification, that these laws make sense.
Conventional scholarly treatments of anti-hoarding legislation thus fail to deal with three difficult questions - one definitional, one descriptive and one normative in character. Definitionally, precisely which activities do anti-hoarding laws seek to prevent? Descriptively, which group(s) within a society would favour such laws? And normatively, what is the effect of such laws on social welfare?
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