Regime Of Property Rights Research Articles

Environmental Markets: A Property Rights Approach, by Terry L.Anderson and Gary D.Libecap. Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2014, pp. 240, ISBN: 978 0 5212 7965 9, AUD$ 37.59 (paperback) AUD$ 94.03 (hardcover).

Environmental Markets: A Property Rights Approach, by Terry L.Anderson and Gary D.Libecap. Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2014, pp. 240, ISBN: 978 0 5212 7965 9, AUD$ 37.59 (paperback) AUD$ 94.03 (hardcover).

Institutions versus demand: determinants of agricultural development in Saxony, 1660–1850

The study produces new data on the long-term development of vegetable foodstuff output and average labor productivity in Saxon agriculture c. 1660–1850. This territory saw an early development of a large, but spatially dispersed industrial sector and an agrarian reform in 1832. We establish, first, that food demand from the labor force of the non-agricultural sectors promoted agricultural development in the absence of urbanization as well; nevertheless, the spatial dispersion of demand limited the pace of growth. Second, agrarian reform had no effect on output and productivity growth. This is because, on the one hand, the reform consisted mainly in a redistribution of income from land in the long run and did not affect incentive structures. On the other hand, property rights during the pre-reform period were both sufficiently secure and negotiable to reallocate land to more intensive patterns of arable farming under a traditional property rights regime.

Patriarchy and Property Rights among Yoruba Women in Nigeria

ABSTRACTIn most patriarchal societies, women's property rights are often achieved vicariously, usually through their husbands. By contrast, among the Yoruba of Nigeria, women have some levels of autonomy and independence such that they can accumulate property to which their husbands have no claim, yet they customarily do not have any inheritance right to their husbands’ property. This study examines how this gender-equitable property rights regime affects gender relations at the household and societal levels through in-depth interviews conducted in 2012 with fifty-six purposively selected women property owners who lived in urban Ibadan, Nigeria. Findings include that though economic power has improved the status of the women and contributes to development of their communities, it has not yet translated into equity in decision making. More than economic power is required to attain equality. The capability of defining goals and acting upon them is also critical.

Property Rights and Choice: The Case of the Fishery

Formal property rights are typically established after considerable waste has occurred, despite the effectiveness of such schemes in addressing the inefficiencies of common pool resources. Adoption can be contentious because of the assignment of wealth and political influence that accompany the transition to exclusive property rights. This paper studies how the early involvement of harvesters in policy implementation designed to address the commons’ inefficiency may foster perceived legitimacy and lessen political opposition to the establishment of individual property rights. We demonstrate that it is optimal for a manager facing industry strife and reform delay to allow firms to self‐select into the property rights regime. The strategic interaction of harvesters leads to an equilibrium characterized by the global adoption of property rights. Thus, by providing harvesters with a choice between management systems, policy makers can reduce the transaction costs associated with the need to create political consensus, while ensuring an outcome similar to the top‐down implementation of market‐based management. Evidence is provided from a recent policy change in Maryland fisheries in which the provision of a choice resulted in the overwhelming adoption of individual transferable quotas and the end of the race to fish.

Bundles, Duties, and Rights: A Revised Framework for Analysis of Natural Resource Property Rights Regimes

In their 1992 paper, Schlager and Ostrom presented a property rights framework characterized by nested, cumulative attributes. It has become arguably the most ubiquitous framework for analysis of natural resources and property rights. We revisit their contribution and discuss how the framework could evolve to address increasingly complex situations, with particular attention to institutional change. We devote increased attention to duties and liabilities associated with right allocation, tying the framework to a broader property rights literature. We conclude with an application to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), illustrating how revisions to the framework facilitate contemporary institutional analysis.

An empirical analysis of conservation practices, management and sustainability in the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest, Bangladesh

This article examines the factors that influence conservation practices in the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans in Bangladesh. It explores the relationship between tree density reductions and management practices. 412 households in forest-dependent communities (FDCs) were interviewed. Their overwhelming view is that the Sundarbans is being over exploited through overharvesting. Results show that FDCs who engage in resource harvesting under the current property rights regime have less participation in and lower motivation for the conservation of forest resources. Current management by the forest department results in lower commitment by the community to conservation. Conservation of resources could be achieved by the allocation of expanded property rights to give management roles to communities. With the granting of these rights they would engage in conservation practices. The results suggest that constructing effective strategies to promote mangrove conservation require these two factors to be addressed to achieve sustainable forest management.

The Intellectual Property Conundrum: Individual Property Rights v. Cultural Development

The premise behind modern intellectual property rights is to incentivize innovation. However, the modern intellectual property rights regime has three fundamental flaws that cut against its premise to kindle innovation. First, the modern regime conflicts with humans' innate learning and innovating process. Second, the modern regime restricts access to information, which stifles innovation evidenced by empirical studies. Third, the current formation of the social tradeoff is not effective, so it does not benefit society. In sum, the modern regime does not increase technological achievements, i.e. cultural development. These factors suggest alternative legal policies should be adopted, so governments can create laws that foster cultural development. Thus, if the end goal is truly to promote humanity’s wellbeing, then intellectual property rights must be reformed because they stifle innovation and criminalize creativity.

Employment growth heterogeneity under varying intellectual property rights regimes in European transition economies: Young vs. mature innovators

Young innovative companies are supposed to be key drivers of sustainable economic growth. This study examines the employment growth of young, small innovative firms (denoted as innovative youngsters) and contrasts it with the employment growth of established ‘mature innovators’ in 23 European transition economies, where varying degrees of intellectual property protection apply. The growth figures of the two firm groups vary significantly across different intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes. Innovative youngsters seem to benefit from strong intellectual property protection, while mature innovators exhibit the highest employment growth rates when IPRs are rather weak. These findings point to important undiscovered differences in employment growth patterns, which might explain some of the ambiguous results of former research on IPRs, and provide a reason why certain countries might benefit from strong IPRs while others might not.

Change of competition regime and regional innovative capacities: Evidence from dairy restructuring in France

The aim of this article is to analyze how market actors, and farmers in particular, mobilize collective coordination capacities to face global changes – market price or sectorial policies – within different regional contexts. A multi-scale conceptual framework is proposed to analyze market functioning and transformation over time and space. We extend Commons and Fligstein’s work on market institutions to define the notion of competition regime as a combination of four market institutions that legitimizes competition strategies. We also mobilize Ostrom’s work on common property rights regimes to show that a competition regime relies on the creation and management of two systems of common-pool resources, namely innovation capacity and reputation-building. This paper then shows the relevance of this framework through the case study of the current restructuring of dairy supply chains in mountainous areas in France. It shows that market liberalization strongly destabilizes the regional competition regimes that were based on the appropriation of social rights inherent to the national public policies. In the hybrid and specific competition regimes, existing territorial coordination devices are not directly threatened and can support the development of new cooperative strategies. In all cases, with the development of a contractual economy, farmers are incited to develop or to strengthen coordination devices to become effective market participants. Through the development of large territorial producers’ organizations capable of managing milk supply in volume and quality, they would be able to take part in the management of the supply chains. To do so, the present paper suggests that farmers’ organizations need material and immaterial investments and assistance from regional public players to build new local collective capacities. The competition regime framework is an asset for the design of such public supports in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, taking the regional specificity of the markets’ institutions and collective capacities into account.

What are the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in forests, fisheries and rangelands? a systematic review protocol

Abstract Background Property rights to natural resources comprise a major policy instrument for those seeking to advance sustainable resource use and conservation. Despite decades of policy experimentation and empirical research, however, systematic understanding of the influence of different property rights regimes on resource and environmental outcomes remains elusive. A large, diverse, and rapidly growing body of literature investigates the links between property regimes and environmental outcomes, but has not synthesized theoretical and policy insights within specific resource systems and especially across resource systems. Here we provide a protocol for conducting a systematic review that will gather empirical evidence over the past two decades on this topic. We will ask the following questions: a) What are the environmental impacts of different property regimes in forests, fisheries, and rangelands? b) Which property regimes are associated with positive, negative or neutral environmental outcomes? c) How do those environmental outcomes compare within and across resource systems and regions? Methods We will assess current knowledge of the environmental impacts of property rights regimes in three resource systems in developing countries: forests, fisheries and rangelands. These resource systems represent differing levels of resource mobility and variability and capture much of the range of ecosystem types found across the globe. The review will use a bundle of rights approach to assess the impacts of three main property regimes—state, private, and community—as well as mixed property regimes that involve some combination of these three. Assessment of the impacts of property rights regimes across a range of different resource systems and ecosystem types will enable exploration of commonalities and differences across these systems. Our analysis will emphasize major insights while highlighting important gaps in current research.

Commercial real estate investment in Ho Chi Minh City – A level playing field for foreign and domestic investors?

In Vietnam, similarly to other countries with the same system, transformation of the economy from one based on central planning into one founded on market principles, provides incomplete property rights in land and property markets. Nonetheless, cities like Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) are experiencing strong growth in commercial property markets. Although the real estate market is still suffering from the recession in many parts of the world, commercial property development in HCMC is booming. This paper explores the present privatization process and the changing property rights regime related to the real estate market in Vietnam. Employing logistic regression analysis, this study also examines opportunities of foreign and domestic investors in the commercial real estate market in HCM city centre. The findings of this study show that there is not yet a level playing field for foreign and domestic investors, mainly caused by a different property rights regime for both groups of investors, especially related to land lease conditions. We also find that both groups invest in different categories of commercial real estate. However, this does not necessarily lead to reduced foreign investment in Vietnam's real estate market, which means that the transition and privatization process in Vietnam is still moving in the right direction.

A Texel fishing lineage: the social dynamic and economic logic of family firms

In the 1970s and early 1980s, several maritime anthropologists and sociologists pointed out that for a number of economic, social and psychological reasons, the performance of commercial fishing firms based on kin-based capital and labour was highly adaptive. For this reason, most crews in the North Atlantic area seemed to be organized around a core of agnatic relatives with women playing important shore-based roles. As of the early 1990s, the attention of anthropologists and sociologists shifted away from `classical’ themes such as the social organization of fishing to issues of policy and management, particularly property rights regimes and rights-based fishing. Consequently, the topic of kin and family in the fisheries disappeared into the background. Nonetheless, it would appear that family firms are still predominant in the fisheries. In this paper, I will analyze their logic and dynamic in conditions of ecological, economic and political uncertainty, using ethnographic material from research in Dutch fishing communities on the island of Texel. Considerable attention will be devoted to the issue of what rights-based management regimes have meant for the social organization of and kin involvement in fishing firms.

Selected Aspects of the Property Rights Regime in Slovenia in the Context of the EU

Slovenia is member of the EU since 1.5.2004. It was an ex Republic of the Yugoslav federation that declared its independence on 25.6.1991. Slovene territory was part of the empire of Franks from 8th century then of the German empire till 1804 and Austrian empire till 1918. North-eastern part was part of Hungarian state and its successors from 9th century till 1918. Western part of Slovenia was part of Italy between 1918 and 1943. Slovenia became part of the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs from 1914/1929. After World War II it became part of Yugoslavia and its socalist legal system. The socialist legal system that was implemented in Slovenia as in all Republics of the Yugoslav federation was based in the building of state property, which was created by massive confiscations of the property of the so called collaborators in 1945 and then by three nationalization periods which took place between 1945 and 1956. After a difficult economic period, the Yugoslaw state implemented the new system of socialist self management, which meant that workers fullfill directly or equally their social-, economic- and self-administering rights, and decide on issues dealing with the socio-economic situation of the enterprise. This legal system was also based in the building of state and social Property. In the late 80's an ideological, political, economic system disintegrated and in Slovenia as in all countries of Eastern Europe, democracy, free market economy and the rule of law, based on private property and free market economy were the foundation of the transformation. In this context this paper analyzes the transformation that took place in the property rights regime in Slovenia in a legal view in compliance with EU law. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p553

A refugee in my own country: Evictions or property rights in the urban informal economy?

Normative approaches to urban governance and planning and idealised visions of city space too often result in relocation or forced eviction of street traders and other informal economy workers from public space as a policy of choice. Often a response to a short-term political imperative, clearances take place with little understanding of the interconnected nature of the urban informal economy or widespread poverty impacts that result. As a result, street traders feel ostracised and often describe themselves as refugees. Drawing on a property rights perspective, and the ‘legal empowerment’ paradigm, this paper compares the major clearances of street traders that took place in Dar es Salaam in 2006–2007 and Dakar in 2007, with very different outcomes for traders. It explores the political initiatives behind the clearances, the dual property rights regimes in both countries, and the different roles of social movements, resulting in emerging political power in one city and passive marginalisation in another. Finally it argues that the conceptualisation of public space as a hybrid ‘public good’ would allow for a more appropriate property rights regime for the urban informal economy.

The politics of intellectual property rights regimes: An empirical study of new technology use in entrepreneurship

This study examines interactions between political processes and intellectual property rights regimes that can influence the propensity of early-stage entrepreneurs to employ the latest available technologies in their ventures. We argue that the effects of intellectual property regimes are moderated by the nature of a country׳s political system, including the influence of Pirate parties, which advocate for minimal intellectual property enforcement. We combine large-panel cross-country survey data on entrepreneurs and country-level measures of polity (democracy versus autocracy) and intellectual property rights with a new measure (created by the authors) estimating the influence of Pirate parties. Results indicate that entrepreneurs in more democratic (high polity) countries enjoy higher levels of technology usage as intellectual property rights strengthen. By contrast, entrepreneurs in more autocratic (low polity) countries are less likely to use the latest technology as intellectual property rights strengthen. The influence of Pirate parties makes strengthening intellectual property rights more positive for technology use in entrepreneurship. These results contribute to the literature examining institutional and political determinants of high-value forms of entrepreneurship—which may hinge on the extent to which entrepreneurs׳ interests are considered by technology and intellectual property policy-makers.

Determinants of participation of mangrove-dependent communities in mangrove conservation practices

This article examines the factors that influence conservation practices in the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans in Bangladesh. It explores the relationship between mangrove density reductions and past and present management practices. It is a cross-sectional study based on a close-ended structured questionnaire (n = 412), measuring variables of interest from theory of property rights. Randomly selected cross-section of households in mangrove-dependent communities (MDCs) were interviewed. Results show that MDCs who engage in resource harvesting under the current property rights regime have less participation in, and lower motivation for, the conservation of mangrove resources. Strict management by the Forest Department results in lower commitment by the community to conservation. Conservation of resources could be achieved by the allocation of management roles to MDCs through expanded property rights. With the granting of these rights they would be very willing to engage in conservation management. The results suggest that constructing effective strategies to promote mangrove conservation require these two factors to be addressed if sustainable mangrove management is to be achieved.

Corporate enterprises in Albania and Macedonia in comparative law

Transformation is a process closely connected with reforms in the property-rights regime, but retransfering the ownership has been the core of this process in all post communist countries. The objective of this article is to analyse the drafting of commercial legislation in Albania and Macedonia and in which way corporate enterprises were affected from the structure of economic organizations during socialism.

Frugal innovation: aligning theory, practice, and public policy

Purpose– The paper aims to address two key gaps in the literature of frugal innovation. First, it disambiguates frugal innovations into its types, and into the various levels at which it happens. Second, it builds upon the theoretical foundations of resource-based view, new institutional economics, economics of location, and institutional theory to offer testable propositions on determinants of frugal innovations.Design/methodology/approach– This is a conceptual paper. The authors first systematically reviewed the extant literature on frugal innovation and related domains and categorized the existing understanding on the domain into various typologies of frugal innovation. The authors then justified why certain key theoretical lenses are tenable to understand the determinants of frugal innovation and then examined the conditions that enable such innovations.Findings– The paper has three key findings. First, frugal innovation comprises of a frugal mindset, a frugal process and a frugal outcome, which may be practiced distinctly. Second, frugal innovators are of three types: grassroots-level, domestic-enterprise level, and MNC-subsidiary level. Each has their distinctive incentives and styles of frugal innovation. Third, a frugal mindset is encouraged by a resource-scarce environments, weaker institutional intermediaries, and a higher tolerance for uncertainty. Frugal processes are espoused by poor property rights regime and a critical size of lead market; and frugal outcomes are influenced by the network-position of innovators, and the presence of critical lead-markets.Research limitations/implications– The propositions are though testable, but proxies need to be developed to measure the variables, such as a frugal mindset, and a frugal process. Further, the current view on various types and levels of frugal innovation is that of mutual exclusivity, whereas this may not always be the case. Hence, it might be useful to identify contingencies in which these distinctions fade away.Originality/value– The paper is valuable in two key aspects. First, it offers a much-needed theoretical underpinning to the phenomenon of frugal innovation, such that the phenomenon could be better understood and influenced. Second, it nuances the phenomenon by identifying distinct types of frugal innovators in terms of their motivation, institutional influences, and styles of innovation.

Lessons from resource management by indigenous Maori in New Zealand: Governing the ecosystems as a commons

The paradigm shift to holistic management rests on the insight that exploitation affects all aspects of the ecosystem. While scholars and policy-makers all want ecosystem based management (EBM), few, if any, have achieved it in practice. Adaptive governance promises effective EBM, but guidance remains elusive. Looking back to an ecosystem people such as the indigenous Maori in the south of New Zealand and analyzing their resource management system using Ostrom's (1990) eight-principle framework for common property rights regimes allows us to answer three central questions. How did Ngai Tahu, the dominant tribe on the South Island, manage the complex linkages, uncertainty and interactions with nature while exploiting their environment? Was resource exploitation sustainable? And what can be drawn from their management system for modern governance structures? The application of Ostrom's framework shows that kaitiakitanga (stewardship) as an integrated management system generally aligns with the principles necessary for successful EBM and provided Ngai Tahu with the necessary tools to control and adapt measures across space and time, mirroring the modern tenets of adaptive management. Studying a people that practiced EBM successfully provides the insight that EBM may be achieved by governing ecosystems through an integrated common property management system.

A Dynamic Study on Ecological Disaster, Government Regulation, and Renewable Resources

AbstractThis article develops a dynamic model to investigate renewable resource markets under different property rights. We find that different property rights regimes in renewable resource markets yield very different equilibria. Under private property rights, the valve point increases with the natural growth rate, productivity, number of firms, and marginal costs. Under common property rights, “the tragedy of the commons” inescapably occurs. This study suggests how to avoid ecological disaster by implementing a set of public policies.