The representation of alienable and inalienable rights: games in transition function form

We propose a new type of cooperative game—a game in transition function (TF) form—as a means of representing social decision-making procedures that is suitable for the analysis of rights. The TF form is a generalisation of the effectivity function (EF) form, and in particular it tells us (where the EF form does not) about the alienability of a right. We describe procedures for generating a (unique) EF game from a TF game, and for generating a (non-unique) TF game from an EF game. We make some specific proposals about the representation of rights as properties of TF games and comment on some implications about the relationship between rights and Pareto efficiency.