Exercise Of Property Rights Research Articles

Institutional Change and Economic Development in Siberia and the Russian Far East

This paper studies the institutions for exercise of property rights in forestry, fisheries, and mining in Siberia and the Russian Far East, linking current arrangements with the administrative structures of the command era. It describes production, income, and structural change in Asian Russia arguing that if Russia hopes to rely on the rapid growth of Asia as a locomotive for Russian growth, then then the government will need to develop a legal framework for long-run property rights in resources and to establish stronger links for business cooperation with all of the countries of Asia and, particularly, with China, Japan, and South Korea.

Cash Crops and Freedom: Export Agriculture and the Decline of Slavery in Colonial West Africa

SummaryThis article argues that the greatest economic and social transformations of the early colonial period in West Africa, the “cash-crop revolution”, and “the slow death of slavery” and debt bondage, had stronger and more varied causal connections than previously realized. The economic circumstances of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century West Africa delayed and diluted abolitionist measures. Indeed, the coercion of labour, through the exercise of property rights in people, contributed to the speed with which the cash-crop economies developed. Conversely, however, the scale and composition of cash-crop expansion did much to determine that the slave trade and pawning would be replaced by a consensual labour market. They also shaped the possibilities for peasant versus larger-scale organization of production, and the distribution of income by gender and between communities.

A dilemma for libertarianism

Many libertarians make a moral argument that liberty requires the freedom to exercise strong property rights. From this, they argue that no more than a minimal state with sharply limited powers of taxation can be justified. A larger state would supposedly interfere with private property rights and thereby reduce liberty. In response, this article shows how natural rights to property do not entail any particular vision of the state. It demonstrates that the principles of natural property rights support monarchy just as well as they support a capitalist aristocracy. Nothing in the theory of natural property rights rules out government ownership of property or government ownership of the right to tax. Therefore, the natural rights argument does not necessarily imply libertarian limits on the state, but rather the acceptance of whatever state powers and property rights have been in place for a sufficient amount of time. For example, historical property rights in Britain do not imply that private titleholders possess rights that have been subject to interference from the state, as libertarians claim. Instead, they imply that the Queen and her ministers in parliament have a strong claim to at least partial ownership of the whole island of Britain and the property within it. If this argument holds, it poses a serious dilemma for libertarians, forcing them to choose between their account of liberty as the exercise of property rights and their belief that only a minimal state is justifiable.

Forest property rights in the frame of public policies and societal change

Property rights over natural resources became a distinct area of inquiry in environmental economics and policy in the last decades, but their role has not yet been investigated thoroughly. Transition countries represent an excellent material of analysis of various policies and institutional developments concerning the regime of use and management of natural resources. The processes of societal transformation had deep impacts on the forestry sector, entailing land reforms and subsequent changes to its institutional and organisational framework. This paper presents an analysis of the reciprocal relationship between the evolving forest property rights and the conduct of policy and economic actors, in connection with their outcomes. The theoretical framework consists of institutional economics, whose core concept is that patterns of interaction between institutions and actors produce physical outcomes, assessable by criteria such as equity and efficiency. The study concentrated on three distinct periods and the applicable property regimes. Within this framework, the impacts of the characteristics of property regimes and the general framework of socio-economic conditions on the exercise of property rights were analysed. The analysis of the conduct of forest owners in relation to the institutional design was completed by the analysis of the other actors influential for land reforms. Romanian forestry sector, in evolution from the period shortly before World War II to present, represents the case of the study. Research data were collected by interviewing/questioning, participant observation and literature review. They were analysed through an integrated method of content analysis and a matrix analysis. An important conclusion is that not only the regime of forest property is determinant for the outcomes of resource use and management, but also the general settings in which they are embedded. Another essential point is that land reforms driven by either efficiency or equity rationales are not mere diversions of the benefit stream, but complex processes with serious implications for the status of the resource at stake.

PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE GENERAL THEORY OF EXCHANGE: FREQUENTLY NEGLECTED IMPLICATIONS OF THE DIVISION OF LABOUR AND THE LAW OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

The importance of the division of labour and the law of comparative advantage to the operation of modern economies are well known, but many of the implications of these phenomena are less widely appreciated. This article examines the implications of the division of labour and the law of comparative advantage for the ownership and exercise of property rights and the creation and distribution of wealth. It is argued that a fuller appreciation of these phenomena leads to the conclusion that restraints on trade and redistributory measures infringe private property rights and reduce wealth.

Changes in Form and Function of Property Rights Institutions under Threatened Resource Scarcity

Abstract Institutions governing the development and use of groundwater on the High Plains changed following the expanded irrigation demand of the 1960s and 1970s. We compared the regulatory systems embodied in the common law standard of reasonableness with the legislatively authorized administrative programs. While the substantive components of the common law standard remained intact in the legislative and administrative programs, the form and function of the institutions changed significantly. Rules replaced discretionary standards in the definition and protection of property rights in groundwater. Administrative organizations replaced judges and courtrooms as the primary forum for defining rights and settling disputes. These changes reflect conscious preferences for increased security at the price of reduced freedom in the exercise of property rights over groundwater.