Blockquoting X

In Exchange and Production, Alchian and Allen have this interesting paragraph (among many others, of course):

A most common instance of interspecific resources is marriage: Two people become interspecific to each other and to their offspring. Although such arrangements are not central to economic analysis, they indicate that interspecificity of resources can also apply to people; and although people do not own each other, what might appear to be unusual or otherwise inexplicably restrictive contracts or arrangements may be the means of restricting potentially exploitative behavior (173).

Economists are so romantic.