A PROP is a way of encoding structure borne by an object of a symmetric monoidal category. We describe a notion of distributive law for PROPs, based on Beck's distributive laws for monads. A distributive law between PROPs allows them to be composed, and an an algebra for the composite PROP consists of a single object with an algebra structure for each of the original PROPs, subject to compatibility conditions encoded by the distributive law. An example is the PROP for bialgebras, which is a composite of the PROP for coalgebras and that for algebras.
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