Abstract
AbstractThis essay challenges the ubiquitous and rarely questioned assertion that legal property rights are necessary for economic growth and argues that this view of development is incomplete, misleading, and dangerous. The faith in legal property rights emerged from neo-institutional economics, particularly from the work of Ronald Coase, Harold Demsetz, and Douglass North, who recognized that economic assets depended on informal social norms as well as formal legal ones. To date, however, development assistance policies have been narrowly focused on formal legal institutions and have resulted in limited success and often destabilized existing property regimes, leaving societies worse off than before. Through a comparative and historical analysis, this essay preliminarily addresses these theoretical and policy failures and aims to deepen and complicate our understanding of the role of formal legal property rights in changing societies. Examples from the 16
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