Economic Theory Of Property Rights Research Articles

Refining the Rent Dissipation Model in Land Use: Application to Agricultural Insurance in China

Despite apparent efficiency concerns, the use of agricultural insurance as a policy tool has surged in rural China. Its use offers a natural experiment to assess both economic theory of property rights and agricultural policy effectiveness, and to revisit the rent dissipation model that was originally developed to explain the role of property rights in unsustainable fisheries harvest decisions. We focus on evidence of resource overpricing behavior in the context of subsidized agricultural insurance, including evidence of a theoretically-expected increasing rent pattern. Our results reinforce the importance of transactions costs as a driver of economic inefficiency and highlight the role of social costs as an important factor to explicitly consider when designing agricultural policy. In particular, when employing the formal policy mechanism of rural agricultural insurance, we suggest that informal risk-bearing arrangements can be leveraged to reduce social costs behind apparent overpricing behavior and increase land users’ welfare consistent with intended policy goals.

A theoretical and analytical framework to the inquiry of sustainable land management practices

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical and analytical framework by explaining the sustainable livelihoods framework and farming system model from a sustainable point of view. The author studied over 200 publications downloaded using the electronic database search of EBSCO through UNISA online library in June 2018. Keyword combinations of ‘land’, ‘tenure’ and ‘sustainable use’ were used to search for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English from January 1980 to May 2018. The article examines most relevant literature to consolidate the necessary theoretical and analytical foundation in analysing individual and group motivations towards sustainable land management practices. The literature review affirmed that a comprehensive theoretical and analytical framework is scant to empirically analyze the determinants of sustainable land management practices. To partially fill this knowledge gap, the paper provided a generic analytical framework that gives insight not only on pre-decisional processes, but also on post-decisional processes of continued and sustained use of conservation technologies. The analytical framework is developed by combining the sustainable livelihoods framework with the farming system model. It is concluded that the economic theory of property rights may not be adequate as a model to guide land tenure studies and policy. It is recommended that a holistic approach and comprehensive analytical framework is vital for research and development endeavours to ensure sustainable land management practices.

A theoretical and analytical framework to the inquiry of sustainable land management practices

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical and analytical framework by explaining the sustainable livelihoods framework and farming system model from a sustainable point of view. The author studied over 200 publications downloaded using the electronic database search of EBSCO through UNISA online library in June 2018. Keyword combinations of ‘land’, ‘tenure’ and ‘sustainable use’ were used to search for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English from January 1980 to May 2018. The article examines most relevant literature to consolidate the necessary theoretical and analytical foundation in analysing individual and group motivations towards sustainable land management practices. The literature review affirmed that a comprehensive theoretical and analytical framework is scant to empirically analyze the determinants of sustainable land management practices. To partially fill this knowledge gap, the paper provided a generic analytical framework that gives insight not only on pre-decisional processes, but also on post-decisional processes of continued and sustained use of conservation technologies. The analytical framework is developed by combining the sustainable livelihoods framework with the farming system model. It is concluded that the economic theory of property rights may not be adequate as a model to guide land tenure studies and policy. It is recommended that a holistic approach and comprehensive analytical framework is vital for research and development endeavours to ensure sustainable land management practices.

Specifying and Assigning "Bundles of Rights" on Data: An Economic Perspective

This paper shows that with respect to data the legal category of (physical property or intellectual property) is not a suitable model for dealing with the complexity of data governance problems. Although data can be a valuable asset and might need incentives for its generation, the economic and technological conditions regarding data differ significantly from the problems regarding physical goods, innovation, and creative works. Through the much easier excludability and the greater importance of the non-rivalry and context-dependency of the use of data, not the incentive problem for data generation but the problems of access and sharing of data have become the most urgent policy issues. One particularly important reason can be the exclusive de facto control of firms over data, for which no formal property exist, but which can lead to market failures with respect to competition and innovation. The bundle of rights approach (based upon the economic theory of property rights) with its flexibility and wide range of options, how to specify these and to whom these can be assigned, offers a framework that allows for finding appropriate data governance solutions that fit to the specific economic and technological conditions of different industries and contexts. The paper also shows that current digital policy discussions can be interpreted as discussions about the proper specification and assignment of bundles of on data (as, e.g., with regard to the GDPR, data portability or the Digital Markets Act).

Legal and Economic Considerations on the Efficacy of the Civil Law Fiduciary System Compared to the Common Law Trust under the Debates on the Dual Property System

Fiduciary is a better alternative than real securities in many respects. However, it has critical legal and economic disadvantages that cause inefficient consequences. Drawbacks of fiduciary outweigh its advantages compared to Common Law Trust. Since, Trust is based on a distinction of legal ownership and equity ownership which is compatible with the distinction of legal rights and economic rights in the economic theory of property rights. This compatibility between Trust and economic theory makes the Trust economically efficient. On the other hand, the economic rights and legal rights distinction is an unfamiliar issue to the civil law of property system. The civil law of property system covers limited real rights in accordance with the principle of numerus clausus that historically includes legal ownership as legal rights and to repudiate economic rights. In this paper, we analyse how to eliminate legal and economic drawbacks of fiduciary in order to make it as efficient as Trust in the light of transaction cost theorem. The dual property system in the Trust and economic theory should not be totally injected into the civil law of property system. However, the dual property system or a system may have legal consequences as quasi-dual property systems might be injected into a specific field like fiduciary transactions in civil law based capital markets. This argument has been legalized under the EC/2002/47 Financial Collateral Directive and Article 47 of the new Turkish Capital Markets Act.

Complementarity or Substitutability Between the Different Modes of Internet Access: A Property Rights‐Based Analysis on Cybercafés Offerings with Data from Cameroon

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to see whether the preservation of cybercafés’ internet access offering could efficiently withstand the generalization of other internet access modes. To do this, we use the economic theory of Property Rights to show that, considering internet access as an economic good, it is possible to distinguish three internet access modes: the rental internet access mode, the usufruct internet access mode and the full ownership internet access mode. On this basis, the preservation of cybercafés’ activities depends inter alia on the hypothesis of an absence of substitutability between the rental access mode they offered and the two other access modes. This hypothesis is tested using a probit model on data from a survey carried out in three towns of Cameroon. The findings show there is room for substitutability between the cybercafés’ offering and the alternative internet access modes. The no substitutability hypothesis is then disproved. We conclude that cybercafés’ owners should contemplate further diversification strategies.

Property rights, entrepreneurship and coordination

The notion of plan coordination enjoys a central place in the analysis of institutions and competitive market processes. The conventional wisdom is that institutions and policies vary in the extent to which they promote competition and how quickly and completely they bring individuals’ plans into closer coordination with one another. Kirzner has provided the most fully elaborated statement on the use of coordination as a positive analytical device for explaining market dynamics and as a normative criterion for evaluating economic policies. We identify the core propositions in his analysis that elucidate how economic coordination depends upon that most fundamental of market institutions – the system of private property rights. We also probe into Kirzner's claims about inherent limitations in our ability to compare the coordinative potential of alternative property rights systems. We unpack the consequences of these core propositions using the economic theory of property rights. We also examine Kirzner's assertion that dynamic competition – including Schumpeterian innovation – is necessarily coordinative in its market effects. We find that his argument rests on the implicit assumption that property rights remain constant during the process of market adjustment. We provide a case study of the advent of commercial aviation as a potential counterexample to his claims.

The Right to Die: A Property-Rights-Perspective

In this note it is argued that there is a “right to die” and subsequently asked, whether such right can be delegated to the end of assisted suicide. It is a widely and controversially disputed issue. In the discussion medical, ethic and legal perspectives dominate.However, the present contribution is not meant to review and assess the controversial positions against some preceding standard. It rather attempts to shed some light on the significance of a „right to die“ from the point of view of the economic theory of property rights. To this end it proceeds in three steps: Given the fact that suicide can inflict mental as well as material harm to others it is questioned, if there are means to deter people from committing suicide or alternatively induce them to take appropriate steps to avoid harm. It is then asked what the peculiar conditions for assisted suicide could be and suggested that this establishes a specific kind of contract. Finally it is discussed why from the present perspective one-sided assistance to premature death (euthanasia) is ruled out.

ECONOMIC EFFECTIVENESS IN TERMS OF THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF PROPERTY RIGHTS - SELECTED ISSUES

This article shows some issues of an institutional, economic theory of property rights. The principles and the basic concepts of this theory are presented in the paper. The fragmentation of absolute property rights, the implications of the Coase theorem and the private and public property issues are refined. All analysed questions are described regarding an influence of the institutional structure of property rights on the efficiency of the chosen economic processes.

Closing the Theory Gap: How the Economic Theory of Property Rights Can Help Bring ‘‘Stakeholders’’ Back into Theories of the Firm

So-called stakeholder theories of the firm have faced intellectual challenges since they first emerged in business schools in the 1980s. The two challenges that have been the most difficult to over come are that the various versions of the theory did not have rigorous theoretical underpinnings, and thus seemed very ad hoc in practice, and that the result was an overly broad notion of who the stakeholders are, and how firms needed to take them into account. Nonetheless, management theorists, as well as business people who manage firms have found the simplifying assumptions required for popular economic models of the firm, such as principal-agent theory, to be too unrealistic, and not versatile enough to reflect the actual day-to-day balancing act that corporation managers engage in. In recent years, several new economic theories, including team production theory, capital lock-in theory, and the economic theory of property rights, have emerged that show promise of being able to bridge this gap. This article comments on work by Asher, Mahoney and Mahoney on a property rights foundation for a stakeholder theory of the firm.

Partnerships for solid waste management in developing countries: linking theories to realities

Both public and private sectors are active in management of solid waste in developing countries. There is an emerging trend in encouraging the private sector to enter into solid waste management (SWM) operations, and attempts are being made to formally link the public and private sector operators. Such linkages may improve the efficiency of the entire sector and create new opportunities for employment. However, any change in the present order may inevitably affect the lives of millions of most vulnerable and marginalised population in the cities of the developing counties—both as users and providers of the service. It is worth revisiting the fundamentals of partnerships from the perspective of relevant theories. Two pertinent sociological theories, functionalism and general systems, view institutions as composed of interdependent parts that must adapt to survive in a changing world. The economic theory of property rights assigns rights of ownership as the reason for the private sector to excel. Economists also argue that hybrid organisations composed of both public and private sector hold a great deal of promise. These hybrid sector organisations provide a means to combine the efficiency and expertise of the business world with public interest, accountability and broader planning of government. These new organisations are important as alternatives, not replacing the existing order, but balancing the roles played by the public and private sector agencies. The competition theory of management science may be adapted to the concept of complementation in place of the traditional view of competition. This theory explores the values of co-operation among organisations to best exploit the comparative advantage of each. In the light of above theories, this paper analyses the possibilities for public/private partnership using the example of SWM as a sub-sector. The paper discusses necessary conditions for harnessing optimal benefits from this arrangement. Poorly designed attempts for partnership may actually worsen the situation by opening new avenues of inefficiency and corruption. Other caveats and barriers for integration are also presented. The paper concludes that partnerships will not be effective and sustainable unless proper incentives for both sectors are built into the design. Finally, the authors debate whether there is a need for a facilitating agency for designing and nurturing partnerships.

Corporate governance and mass privatisation

After the precipitated decline of the Soviet Empire and its satellite states, a system change seemed to be called for, and many countries embarked on social and political reforms focussing on property structures in the economy. This raised the issue of governance in the institutions that would constitute the structures in which production would have to take place. In particular, some Central European countries opted for mass privatisations of the means of production, on the face of it so as to have the people participate in the wealth of the nation. In fact, the wealth of the nation depends on the structures in which it is constituted. Dissipation of property rights will reduce the value of the nation's productive capital, whereas an intelligent structure that creates good governance structures at the same time, increases the value of the producing capital. This relatively simple insight lies at the heart of our understanding of how to analyse different processes of mass privatisation. This essay develops a theoretical framework by which different governance structures can be analysed. The framework consists of a blend of the economic theory of property rights, new institutional economics and Austrian economic theory.

PROPERTY RIGHTS AND LAND USE REGULATION: A COMPARATIVE EVALUATION / EIENDOMSREGTE EN GRONDGEBRUIK REGULASIES: 'N VERGELYKENDE EVALUASIE

This paper reviews the rationale for policies aimed at limiting the conversion of farmland to non-farm uses from the perspective of the economic theory of property rights. Policy measures to restrict the conversion of agricultural land to non-farm uses are commonplace in many countries. Typically, these policies are introduced to address long-run food security issues and possible externalities associated with incompatibility in land uses. The paper argues that the presence of externalities in the land market does not warrant farmland protection policies. Farmland protection policies in themselves can be a source of policy failure. It concludes that well-defined property rights along with nuisance and trespass laws, are necessary and sufficient for efficient allocation of land and can be a better alternative to farmland protection policies.

Property rights issues involving plant genetic resources: implications of ownership for economic efficiency

The economic theory of property rights is applied to the issue of the conservation of plant genetic diversity, an issue often discussed in terms of benefit sharing, in order to demonstrate that the assignment of property rights is important for reasons of efficiency as well as for equity. Given the existence of transaction costs within an industry, the location of a property rights assignment is a crucial factor determining the incentives for efficient levels of investment at various levels of that industry. In the context of plant genetic resources, this means that property rights that are located at the retail end of the pharmaceutical and plant breeding industries may not have sufficient effect to generate the incentives to supply adequate amounts of plant genetic resources to the research and development sectors at the base of these industries.

Intellectual Property Rights, Input Markets, and the Value of Intangible Assets

Intellectual property rights (IPRs) appear to play an important role in facilitating production and exchange in certain input markets. This paper provides a simple theory about the relationship between stronger IPRs and contract-based production under assumptions of incomplete contracting. Employing some features of Grossman and Hart, Hart and Moore, and Hart (1995) (“GHM”), it is shown that property rights over intangible assets create incentives for independent supplier firms to produce research and development (R&D)intensive inputs for use by downstream producers of a final product. Legal rights over intellectual property allow these important assets to be “owned,” in the GHM sense of providing residual rights exercisable in the event of incomplete contractibility. Weak or nonexistent property rights create severe misappropriation risks for firms with intangible assets who must adapt them to make a specialized input. Once property rights are created or strengthened, it is feasible in some cases for an input maker to constitute itself as an independent firm, rather than as an integrated unit inside a larger firm. Asset ownership can then be allocated per standard GHM theory to provide proper incentives to make investments specific to the supplier-manufacturer relationship. In this way, IPRs are seen to contribute to an increase in the value of underlying assets, and hence ultimately to firm specialization and even industry structure. The theory of this paper accounts for recent empirical evidence linking stronger IPRs to a greater incidence of licensing activity. It also contributes to the ongoing modification of the economic theory of property rights associated with the early work of Harold Demsetz (1967).

Property rights regimes and the management of resources

The property rights regime is an important link between the yield of a natural resource and the appropriation and maintenance incentives of its users. This paper discusses the theoretical background for this link and provides insights as to the function of the property rights regime, drawing from recent developments in the economics literature on optimal ownership patterns and the theory of repeated games. The performances of different resource ownership patterns are evaluated using the criterion of economic efficiency. The economic theory of property rights is based on the idea that, because contractual arrangements are bound to be incomplete, there is scope for opportunistic behaviour and therefore the resulting resource management is likely to be inefficient. Optimal resource ownership patterns are viewed as solutions to the problem of structuring private users' incentives in accordance with the socially desirable management of resources.

From common fish to rights based fishing: Fisheries management and the evolution of exclusive rights to fish

Since the Second World War the international Law of the Sea has been altered fundamentally. An exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles from baselines has been established, in which the coastal states have practically full sovereignty over natural resources including fish. This development appears explicable in the light of the economic theory of property rights, due to increased scarcity of fish and lower costs of supporting claims to fish resources. The EEZ has major implications for the efficient utilization of fish resources through its limitation of free access. In some cases it amounts to the establishment of national property rights to fish resources, while in others the number of parties with a legitimate claim to access has been restricted. In the wake of this, fisheries management by total allowable catches (TACs) has become widespread. This method of management has a potential for increasing the efficiency of fisheries. Given that a single state, or a group of states, are able to control the fishery, how should this be done to ensure efficiency? Four methods are discussed: (i) Privatization of the resources; (ii) taxes on landings or fishing activity; (iii) fishing licences, and (iv) individual transferable quotas (ITQs). Some questions related to ITQs are discussed; (i) fixed ITQs versus shares in the TAC; (ii) stable versus variable ITQs; and (iii) how the TAC should be set for each particular year. The economic theory of property rights predicts the emergence of private property rights to fish stocks or fishing rights in the present situation. Recent cases of such rights emerging are discussed.

Information as Property and as a Public Good: Perspectives from the Economic Theory of Property Rights

Some issues relating to property in information are reviewed in the light of recent work on the economic theory of property rights. According to this theory, costs of transaction are central to the evaluation of property rights and related public policy. Accordingly, special circumstances relative to transaction costs are considered in the cases of public libraries, photocopying, computer software, and satellite television feeds.

The Reason of Rules and the Rule of Reason

La explicación de los fenómenos colectivos a partir de decisiones individuales racionales es el objetivo del enfoque económico de la teoría social. Este enfoque parece ser correcto en su núcleo, Sin embargo, su suposicion básica, es decir, que el decisor racional posee un control pleno de las alternativas de la respectiva situación de decisión, es inconciliable con un comportamiento guiado por reglas. Esta incoherencia impide que el enfoque económico pueda llegar a una adecuada comprensión del origen y mantenimiento de las instituciones sociales. Si la existencia de reglas y el comportamiento según reglas ha de ser explicado de acuerdo con el mismo modelo de comportamiento, es necesario introducir una modificación básica del "modelo del comportamiento económico". En este trabajo se esboza la. manera como puede llevarse a cabo esta modificación dentro del marco de consideraciones filosófico-sociales generales acerca de la razón de las reglas.

Property Rights and the Dynamic Inefficiency of Capitalism: Comment

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommunicationsProperty Rights and the Dynamic Inefficiency of Capitalism: CommentH. E. Frech IIIH. E. Frech III Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 83, Number 1Feb., 1975 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/260314 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1975 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Xiangzhuo Wang Faith and Property Rights: Discussion on the Legality of Virtual Identity and Property Rights Distribution, Advances in Applied Sociology 11, no.0505 (Jan 2021): 281–289.https://doi.org/10.4236/aasoci.2021.115025Pavel Potužák What is the Optimum Saving Rate from the Perspective of the Receivers of Interest?, Politická ekonomie 65, no.11 (Feb 2017): 45–61.https://doi.org/10.18267/j.polek.1126 Roger A. McCain Information as Property and as a Public Good: Perspectives from the Economic Theory of Property Rights, The Library Quarterly 58, no.33 (Sep 2015): 265–282.https://doi.org/10.1086/602015David Goetze Voluntary Siting of Unwanted Facilities, (Jan 1988): 204–222.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08891-1_13Norman Furniss The Political Implications of the Public Choice - Property Rights School, American Political Science Review 72, no.22 (Aug 2014): 399–410.https://doi.org/10.2307/1954100