Role Of Property Rights Research Articles

Direitos de Propriedade e o Desenvolvimento Econômico das Etnias Indígenas Brasileiras: Instituições e a Emergência da Ordem Territorial

The paper aims to understand the relationship that lies between land tenure regimes enforcement and the economic development among indigenous peoples. It was performed a review on Coase’s (1960) and Demsetz’s (1967) institutional economic approaches that underpin the key role of property rights in Economics. Also recent researches are discussed which argue to the importance of the role performed by a broader array of elements as in Ostrom (1990, 2000) and Fitzpatrick (2006): i) indigenous societies’ traditions, ii) social coalition of interests, iii) State third-part enforcement. At the end of the paper it is developed a brief analysis of Brazilian indigenous public policies and the unsuccessful legislative process of discussions to the law project 2057/91 that aims to rule a new Indigenous Peoples Statute

A review of the role of property rights and forest policies in the management of the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest in Bangladesh

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate past forest management policies and property rights regimes in achieving sustainability of the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest (SMF) in Bangladesh. The adequacy of forest policies to reflect regimes of property rights in their design and implementation is examined using content analysis. The analysis synthesises forest policies of four distinct historical time periods, and the embedding of property rights during those periods using Schlager and Ostrom's typology. The findings reveal the inadequacy of the existing state property rights regime to secure the livelihood of 3.5million people in marginalised and disadvantaged forest-dependent communities, and to achieve sustainability in the SMF by reversing the trend of rapid reduction of forest resources. The challenge, therefore, is to find an alternative property rights regime to address the missing link between conservation and livelihood-security of forest-dependent communities using sustainable management practices in the SMF.

Institutions, Property Rights, and Economic Development in Historical Perspective

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Fisheries economics: cutting a broad swath in the field of scientific inquiry

Fisheries economics: cutting a broad swath in the field of scientific inquiry

Participation in the world's first clean development mechanism forest project: The role of property rights, social capital and contractual rules

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) forest projects are perceived as an attractive way to both help mitigate climate change and transfer income to rural poor. However, to engender participation of small-scale producers, a CDM forest project must offer sufficient incentives, while minimizing their costs of participation, all the while respecting the need for additionality. Property rights, social capital and contractual rules are critical in the success of CDM forest projects. In this paper, we ask what factors affect participation in the world's first CDM project, established in Guangxi Province, China. Using village-level surveys, we find that although the project facilitates participation through carbon pooling and a share-holding system, much of the project land remains unforested. We find that the primary reasons for the unforested regions are constrained contractual rules, property rights allocation disputes and low levels of social capital in some villages.

Capitalism obscured: the limits of law and rights-based approaches to poverty reduction and development

The Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) was established by the United Nations in 2005 and concluded in 2008. Although inspired by Hernando de Soto's analysis of the role of property rights in economic development, the scope of the Commission was defined as ‘legal empowerment’ in general. This commentary offers a critique of the CLEP report, and argues that its underlying assumptions rest on an idealised version of liberal democratic capitalism in which a dynamic market economy assures ‘win-win’ solutions for all. This implies that there are no tensions between the four ‘pillars’ of legal empowerment identified by CLEP (the rule of law, property rights, labour rights, and business rights). However, in the real world of capitalism, in both democratic and authoritarian versions, there are structural tensions between classes of capital and classes of labour, which result in the economy and its underlying institutional order becoming a key site of contestation. The case of farm labour in rural South Africa is used to illustrate this argument. A focus on legal rights can, however, be ‘empowering’ to a degree, when it helps defend poor people from exploitation and abuse, or is located within broader strategies to eradicate systemic poverty.

The role of property rights in determining the environmental quality–income relationship

This paper examines the role of property rights in shaping the relationship between environmental quality and income. It develops an analytical framework that integrates the effects of property rights evolution, natural resource attributes, agent characteristics, and production technology on the environment–income relationship. The substantive strength of this framework lies in its ability to rationalize a wide range of environment–income relationships. The model shows that the U-shaped environment–income relationship, which is consistent with the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, can arise only under specific model conditions. Thus the framework provides an additional explanation for non-universality of EKC. We provide evidence in support of our framework from case studies of various natural resources.

The Role of Property Rights in Determining the Environmental Quality-Income Relationship

This paper examines the role of property rights in shaping the relationship between environmental quality and income, largely missed in the literature. We develop an analytical framework that integrates the effects of property rights evolution, natural resource attributes, agent characteristics, and production technology on the environment-income relationship. The substantive strength of this framework lies in its ability to rationalize a wide range of environment-income relationships. The model shows that the U-shaped environment-income relationship, which is consistent with the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis, can arise only under specific model conditions. Thus the framework provides an additional explanation for non-universality of EKC. We provide evidence in support of our framework from case studies of various natural resources.

Property Rights: The Neglected Theme of 20th-Century American Planning

Problem: Planning affects individual property rights, which have a special cultural significance in the United States, and it has often protected the interests of affluent and influential groups in the past. Thus, it is not surprising that many Americans perceive planning negatively. Purpose: We provide a perspective on the role of property rights in the history of American planning, arguing for confronting these issues as part of finding a better way forward. Methods: We reviewed primary and secondary historical sources and analyzed key legal cases and legislation. Results and conclusions: Planners should honestly acknowledge the role planning has played in protecting elite property rights and should consider taking three steps toward a more positive future. First, they should tell their own story, rather than leaving this to opponents of planning. Second, they should highlight both the rights and the duties of private property owners and of the larger community. Third, planners should not shy away from stating the impacts their proposals would have on property rights. Takeaway for practice: In order to accurately claim that planning manages property in the public interest, planners must understand and explain how planning proposals benefit and harm property owners. Research support: None.

The Role of Property Rights as an Institution: Implications for Development Policy

There is a very real risk that reforms enacted in the name of property rights will fail if policy makers employ the rhetoric of property rights, but don't pay careful attention to what makes property regimes function in the real world. When they are secure and divisible, property rights unleash entrepreneurship and economic prosperity and form the basis for trade and markets. Divisibility means that individuals may trade sticks in their bundle of property rights with others -- they are allowed to negotiate and decide how they may or may not use property they hold. In many countries legislative, regulatory and, at times, customary barriers block the divisibility of rights or fail to enforce rights, creating insecurity for rights holders. Well-intentioned development programs often create similar constraints. Such decisions mute the incentive structure that exists when property rights are robust and contracts are respected. When such barriers exist, economic growth is sacrificed, and human flourishing is constrained.

Decentralization of Natural Resource Governance Regimes

This chapter reviews the literature on natural resource decentralization with an emphasis on forests in developing countries. This literature can be located at the intersection between discussions of good governance and democracy, development, and poverty alleviation, on the one hand, and common property resources, community-based resource management, and local resource rights, on the other. Policies implemented in the name of decentralization, however, are often not applied in ways compatible with the democratic potential with which decentralization is conceived, and only rarely have they resulted in pro-poor outcomes or challenged underlying structures of inequity. Greater attention to who receives decentralized powers, the role of property rights, the notion of “the local,” and the meeting of expert and local knowledge provides insights into key issues and contradictions. Fundamental differences in conceptions of democracy, participation, and development lie behind these contradictions and shape strategies for the redistribution of access to political power and resources, which is implied by decentralization.

Decentralization of Natural Resource Governance Regimes

This chapter reviews literature on natural resource decentralization with an emphasis on forests in developing countries. This literature can be located at intersection between discussions of good governance and democracy, development, and poverty alleviation, on one hand, and common property resources, community-based resource management, and local resource rights, on other. Policies implemented in name of decentralization, however, are often not applied in ways compatible with democratic potential with which decentralization is conceived, and only rarely have they resulted in pro-poor outcomes or challenged underlying structures of inequity. Greater attention to who receives decentralized powers, role of property rights, notion of the local, and meeting of expert and local knowledge provides insights into key issues and contradictions. Fundamental differences in conceptions of democracy, participation, and development lie behind these contradictions and shape strategies for redistribution of access to political power and resources, which is implied by decentralization.

The Marriage Penalty: Women, Property Rights, and Credit Markets in Yucatán, 1850 – 1900

Abstract This article addresses how marital property regimes acted as obstacles to the development of the Yucatán credit market. Marriage is a contract, and historically it carries with it significant financial corollaries. Dowries, marital property regimes, and inheritance laws were all designed to support the economic instrument that marriage represented. There are many other ways in which marriage intersects with markets; this article assesses the role of property rights, and specifically, married women’s property rights, in the credit markets of nineteenth-century Yucatán. Using mortgage contracts and probate records recorded by notaries, this article analyzes the participation of women in the local mortgage market, taking into account the legal context in which it developed, and explains how legal tradition and civil codes contributed to the distortions that affected women in the local credit market. This article shows specifically that the analysis of women’s participation in economic markets in the nineteenth century must take their marital status into account, as well as the unequal legal position of husbands and wives under the laws of the time, and concludes that marital property rights, and by extension marriage, played an important and unexpected role in the region’s credit market.

Property rights, food security and child growth: Dynamics of insecurity in the Kafue Flats of Zambia

This paper provides arguments for discussions of the role of property rights for food security and child nutrition in rural Africa. The results are drawn from a case study in the Kafue Flats of Zambia. They show that unclear jurisdictional boundaries and weak authorities facilitated re-negotiations of property rights related to natural resources in the context of the Southern African food crisis 2002–2003. Access to natural resources was skewed towards the more powerful. On average, food intake was temporarily 50% lower than the annual mean, compared to a less than 10% decrease in the lean season 2003–2004. Large inequalities existed between different clusters of villages, according to the history of immigration and ethnicity. Yet the variability was greatest within villages. Households, which reported increasing difficulties with access to natural resources, had less diversified income-generating activities, lower food intake and more children showing impaired growth. Discussions addressing the growing disparities in rural areas should focus on a realistic implementation and enforcement of property rights in context of situated local power-relations, next to the harmonization of different tenure systems related to natural resources.

Combining geomatics and conventional methods for monitoring forest conditions under different governance arrangements

This study employed an innovative methodological framework that combines geomatics and conventional survey methods to monitor changes in forest conditions and examine their associations with local forest governance parameters in a mountain watershed covering 153.3 km2 in the middle mountains of Nepal. The study involved two spatial scales and analytical steps. First, geomatics techniques were used to map and detect changes in major land cover types in the watershed between 1976 and 2000 and to analyze relationships between forest cover changes and governance arrangements. This was followed by micro-level analysis of the relationships between the biological conditions of selected forests within the watershed and their governance arrangements, using conventional survey methods and analytical tools. The findings show that forest cover in the watershed increased by about 15 per cent during the period. The rate of increase in forest cover was highest in areas under a semi-government type of governance arrangement, while the community forests were generally better in terms of current biological conditions compared to the semi-government forests. This inconsistency between the findings from the two analyses does not allow us to draw any firm conclusions regarding the role of property rights in determining forest condition, but it indicates that the outcomes of local forest management initiatives may be more dependent on local institutional arrangements regulating forest use and maintenance of forest resources than on the type of property rights arrangements. The findings also provide evidence of the methodological suitability of the research approach adopted, which may be useful for addressing many other research questions related to forestry and natural resources management, particularly those involving multiple spatial scales.

Progress, Freedom and Regulatory Transcendence

The convergence of markets in the digital age is placing policymakers under increasing pressure to extend regulations borne by incumbents to new entrants. In the emerging battle between telephone and cable companies to provide video service, cable companies are requesting that video service obligations such as anti-redlining rules be applied to telephone companies and all other new entrants But all this lobbying does little to help determine what's best for consumers. Given the long history of regulate my new competitors like me in the telecom space, four principles policymakers should use when being lobbied with such arguments: 1. Policymakers shouldn't consider equal regulatory treatment appeals in isolation. These approaches say nothing about whether the rules in question do more harm than good. 2. Policymakers should avoid imposing rules where market forces can achieve the same result. Companies' pleas to 'regulate unto others but not unto me' can induce lobbying fatigue and thereby distract policymakers from a simple truth: the same technological developments that brought another round of lobbyists to their offices also increase the potential for competition. 3. Policymakers should respect the role of property rights. Consumers win as their choice of offerings expands. Companies will be reluctant to provide these choices, however, if government requires or allows the fruits of their labors to be taken unfairly or without adequate compensation. This is true whether it is an uneconomic build-out requirement or an uneconomic forced access policy. 4. Policymakers should know taxation by regulation can't be sustained in a competitive environment when it comes to regulatory parity. There should be an imperative to remove the millstone from incumbents rather than impose the same burdens on new entrants; it should be done by regulating all parties down to parity. The final metric has to be what is best for consumers.

The Quality of Mercy: Social Health Insurance in the Charitable Liberal State

This paper has two, mutually supportive purposes: (1) to show that the modern economic rationale for universal social health insurance is consistent with the classical liberal understanding of property rights; (2) to show that the writings of the leading liberal sages-Locke, Smith, Mill, and Hayek-are congenial to programs economically similar to universal social health insurance, and, in Hayek's cases, were specifically approving. It is hoped that these facts and reasonings, which are unlikely to be known in toto to those who do not normally study across the intersection of philosophy and economics, will encourage a dialogue that reasserts in a non-ideological way the neglected role of property rights in the health economic assessment of social health insurance alternatives.

Innovation in Natural Resource Management: The Role of Property Rights and Collective Action in Developing Countries

Innovation in Natural Resource Management: The Role of Property Rights and Collective Action in Developing Countries

Economic and ecological transformation processes in East German water management regimes: the role of property rights and governance structures.

As in many fen land regions in East Germany, long-standing intensive arable farming--enabled by reclamation--has caused soil deterioration and high water runoff in the Schraden region. The more than ten years of economic and political transformation that followed the breakdown of the socialist regime has worsened the situation and even added new problems. The visible consequences are droughts in the summer, waterlogged plots in the spring, and worn-down water management facilities that operate in an uncoordinated or even unauthorized way. Given the local public-good character of some features of the fen land, the common-pool character of the ecosystem's intermittently scarce resource water, and the conflicting interests of regional stakeholders, it is argued that the reallocation of property rights over reclamation systems, together with ineffective coordination mechanisms, have caused the physical and institutional failure of the water management system and so impeded appropriate land use.

Property rights, productivity, and the nature of noncontractible actions in a franchise system

Viewing ownership as bargaining power when some actions cannot be contracted upon, we explore the role of property rights in franchising, paying particular attention to complementary franchisor and franchisee noncontractibles, and cases of franchisor scale economies. Then, and regardless of ownership, franchise system performance increases with the number of franchises and with productivity innovations. Performance also increases if the franchisor can visibly commit to actions. Limits on scale economies suggest that the franchise system may perform better when assets are franchisee-owned. The strategic environment is more complex when noncontractibles substitute. Then all parties may be immiserized by a productivity innovation.