This book presents a critical reassessment of theories of property rights, in response to conflicts and competition between different groups, and the state. It does so by taking an institutional political perspective to analyse the structures of property rights, with a focus on a series of case studies from Bangladesh. In doing so, the book highlights the importance of property rights for economic growth, why developing countries often fail to design property rights conducive for economic development, and the strategies required for designing an efficient structure of rights. Since property rights falls within the domain of Law and Economics, the book ventures to explain legal issues from an economic perspective, resulting in empirical analysis that comprises both legal and non-legal cases.
This book addresses a puzzle in political economy: why is it that political instability does not necessarily translate into economic stagnation or collapse? In order to address this puzzle, it advances a theory about property rights systems in many less developed countries. In this theory, governments do not have to enforce property rights as a public good. Instead, they may enforce property rights selectively (as a private good), and share the resulting rents with the group of asset holders who are integrated into the government. Focusing on Mexico, this book explains how the property rights system was constructed during the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship (1876-1911) and then explores how this property rights system either survived, or was reconstructed. The result is an analytic economic history of Mexico under both stability and instability, and a generalizable framework about the interaction of political and economic institutions.
Secure property rights are central to economic development and stable government, yet difficult to create. Relying on surveys in Russia from 2000 to 2012, Timothy Frye examines how political power, institutions, and norms shape property rights for firms. Through a series of simple survey experiments, Property Rights and Property Wrongs explores how political power, personal connections, elections, concerns for reputation, legal facts, and social norms influence property rights disputes from hostile corporate takeovers to debt collection to renationalization. This work argues that property rights in Russia are better seen as an evolving bargain between rulers and rightholders than as simply a reflection of economic transition, Russian culture, or a weak state. The result is a nuanced view of the political economy of Russia that contributes to central debates in economic development, comparative politics, and legal studies.
What guidance does academic research really provide to economic policy development? The critical and analytical surveys in this volume investigate links between policies and outcomes by surveying work from broad macroeconomic policies to interventions in microfinance. Asserting that there are no universal correspondences between policies and outcomes, contributors demonstrate instead that only an intense familiarity with the development context and the universe of applicable economic models can generate successful policies. Getting cause-and-effect right is essential for policy design and implementation. With the goal of drawing researchers and policy makers closer, this volume highlights our increasing understanding of ways to combine economic theorizing with careful, thoughtful empirical work. Presents an accurate, self-contained survey of the current state of the field Summarizes the most recent discussions, and elucidates new developments Although original material is also included, the main aim is the provision of comprehensive and accessible surveys
In the end, the book provides a fresh, comprehensive overview of an intriguing subject, accessible to anyone with a minimal background in economics. (An introductory chapter introduces the handful of assumptions embedded in the text's economics and law).
Property Rights in Land widens our understanding of property rights by looking through the lenses of social history and sociology, discussing mainstream theory of new institutional economics and the derived grand narrative of economic development. As neo-institutional development theory has become a narrative in global history and political economy, the problem of promoting global development has arisen from creating the conditions for ‘good’ institutions to take root in the global economy and in developing societies. Written by a collection of expert authors, the chapters delve into social processes through which property relations became institutionalized and were used in social action for the appropriation of resources and rent. This was in order to gain a better understanding of the social processes intervening between the institutionalized ‘rules of the game’ and their economic and social outcomes. This collection of essays is of great interest to those who study economic history, historical sociology and economic sociology, as well as Agrarian and rural history.
The right to own and use private property is among the most essential human rights and the essential basis for economic growth. That’s why America’s Founders guaranteed it in the Constitution. Yet in today’s America, government tramples on this right in countless ways. Regulations forbid people to use their property as they wish, bureaucrats extort enormous fees from developers in exchange for building permits, and police departments snatch personal belongings on the suspicion that they were involved in crimes. In the case of Kelo v. New London, the Supreme Court even declared that government may seize homes and businesses and transfer the land to private developers to build stores, restaurants, or hotels. That decision was met with a firestorm of criticism across the nation. In this, the first book on property rights to be published since the Kelo decision, Timothy Sandefur surveys the landscape of private property in America’s third century. Beginning with the role property rights play in human nature, Sandefur describes how America’s Founders wrote a Constitution that would protect this right and details the gradual erosion that began with the Progressive Era’s abandonment of the principles of individual liberty. Sandefur tells the gripping stories of people who have found their property threatened: Frank Bugryn and his Connecticut Christmas-tree farm; Susette Kelo and the little dream house she renovated; Wilhelmina Dery and the house she was born in, 80 years before bureaucrats decided to take it; Dorothy English and the land she wanted to leave to her children; and Kenneth Healing and his 17-year legal battle for permission to build a home. Thanks to the abuse of eminent domain and asset forfeiture laws, federal, state, and local governments have now come to see property rights as mere permissions, which can be revoked at any time in the name of the “greater good.” In this book, Sandefur explains what citizens can do to restore the Constitution’s protections for this “cornerstone of liberty.”
In this thought-provoking book, Jean-Pierre Chauffour argues that freedom in all its economic, civil, and political dimensions is the only internally consistent and mutually supportive way of thinking about development and human rights.
