Michael Heller is one of America's leading authorities on property. He is the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law and former Vice Dean for Intellectual Life at Columbia Law School. In The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (2008), Heller sets out a market paradox that he discovered: private ownership usually creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect - it creates gridlock.