Strength Of Property Rights Research Articles

Methodology and framework of comparative urban planning law

PurposeThis study aims to systematise the methodology used in comparative urban planning law and propose primary contexts for comparison in planning law.Design/methodology/approachThis study undertook a review of comparative law methodology discourse and sought to establish connections between the discourse and the field of planning law.FindingsThis study argues for establishment of a realistic goal for comparative planning law by focusing on the planning law's modifiability. The goal of comparison in planning law should not be to find universally desirable principles or better solutions. Rather, the goal should be to identify a motive for devising a solution. This is because it is not only difficult to establish legal values that are universally applicable to planning law but also inappropriate to determine superiority of planning laws that have been developed over time by each jurisdiction’s sovereignty and policies on land use. When determining comparable systems for analysis among legal systems that are functionally equivalent, it is important to consider the context of land use relations alongside the comparative analysis to be done. To set realistic goals, the context should not be extended indefinitely but be systematised. Based on the foundational relationship underlying planning law, including the tension between planning authorities and property owners, this study presents five specific contexts for comparative analysis: “Strength of Property Rights,” “Level of Judicial Intervention,” “Plan- or Development-led System,” “Allocation of Planning Power” and “Level of Participation.” Examination of these contexts will allow better understanding of the similarities and differences among different systems and practical application of the results of comparative studies.Originality/valueThis study presents a novel approach to systematising the methodology and framework of comparative planning law.

Property rights, transaction costs, and the limits of the market

To clarify the determinants and interaction of property rights and transaction costs, I study the design of the property rights on either a good whose consensual transfer entails a transaction inefficiency or an upstream firm’s input whose random cost is nonverifiable and ex ante non-contractible. More disperse traders’ valuations and larger odds that the upstream party can appropriate the quasi-rent induced by contract incompleteness produce more severe transaction inefficiencies and larger incomplete contracting costs, respectively. Larger transaction costs, in turn, induce weaker property rights because of the trade-off between inefficient exclusion from trade/innovation and expropriation. These implications survive when some transactors have more political influence on institutional design, or I consider the disincentive effect of weak property rights. Furthermore, they are consistent with the interplay among proxies for the availability of technological progress, severity of transaction costs and strength of property rights for 139 countries observed between 2006 and 2018.

English

This study examines the effect of savings on investment in East African countries in the face of the recent reduction in trade barriers and other regional integration policies. The findings reveal that among all the regions in Africa, East Africa had the lowest household saving for the period 2000-2016 and only Burundi and Kenya savings and investment rates were co-integrated. The policy implication is that the domestic saving rates significantly drive economic growth via investment in only Burundi and Kenya. In addition, there was weaker impact of savings on investment in the East African Community (EAC) due to flexible capital mobility and harmonized government policies. These findings also corroborate the Solow model that capital accumulation (saving) is not the main driver of economic growth (investment) but rather exogenous technological progress. The study therefore recommends that knowledge, education and skills of the labor force, number of years of schooling, learning by doing, the strength of property rights, the quality of infrastructure, cultural attitudes towards entrepreneurship and work should be improved in the EAC.   Key words: Savings, investment, capital mobility, co-integration, economic growth.

Is Slack Good for Collaboration? The Effects of Contingency Budgets on Value Creation and Capture

This study develops a theoretical perspective on the effects of financial slack on value co-creation and capture when managing sovereign stakeholders – actors that compete for a share of value by leveraging their bargaining power and strength of property rights. We find that increases in the slack carried by the capital provider, but only up to a certain amount, increase collective value. We illustrate this curvilinear relationship by drawing on data on how the UK Government hesitated to build a vast contingency budget ahead of committing to share decision rights with local authorities to plan the country´s first railway network in 120 years. We derive formal boundary conditions using game theory. We show the financial slack that maximizes collective value is contingent on the benefits that each party accrues from compromising: if the compromises are low-value creating, collective value is maximized by the slack that maximizes value for the capital provider; if they are high-value creating, collective value is maximized by increasing slack up to the amount that maximizes stakeholder value - if the capital provider accepts to trade off a loss in private value for gains in collective value. Further, as the cost of slack goes up, its positive impact decreases and the space that slacks enables for reaching a compromise narrows too.

Are they satisfied with land taking? Aspects on procedural fairness, monetary compensation and behavioral simulation in China’s land expropriation story

Farmland expropriation and the associated satisfaction or otherwise of farmers has been receiving increased attention under the background of China's rapid urbanization. We use a literature review to identify specific gaps that need to be filled: (1) where and how the satisfaction of land expropriation comes from? (2) how to effectively measure the level of satisfaction? The evaluation of satisfaction is considered to come from three stages of pre, during and post expropriation. This paper aims to examine two groups of land-taken and land-kept farmers by using the binary nonlinear model, logit and order-Probit regression, blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and Heckman two-step selection as the data analysis method. Two research questions are raised in an extended Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, including: 1) which factors mostly affect farmer's willingness and satisfaction in the IAD framework? and 2) what is the marginal effect of different factors, especially of the interaction between land compensation standards and the openness and fairness of expropriation procedures? The four main results indicate that, firstly, improvement in the compensation criterion is helpful for improving the level of satisfaction, but does not mean that higher compensation is better, because empirical research indicates that simply increasing the amount of compensation does not significantly increase satisfaction unless the farmers are consulted over the land-acquisition procedures and compensation amounts. Second, the most important aspect for the farmers is how much their income level increases, ‘inequality rather than want is the cause of trouble’ and, in the absence of any consultation, ‘waiting for the right place to sell' in the next round. Third, compensation should be allocated to the farmer instead of the rural collective. Fourth, according to the theories of resource endowment and reference dependence, to explicate the negative effect between the strength and perception of property rights, it is considered that the inter-relationship between land ownership and farmland circulation is uncertain. Whether the influence is positive or negative mostly depends on the strength of the property rights, institutional environment, behavioral cognitive ability and the capability to implement or act.

The Essential Structure of Property Law

This Article examines a characteristic of property entitlements fundamental to the structure of property systems that has received scant academic attention, a characteristic referred to as the mutual exclusivity principle. According to this principle, a property system does not allow for the existence of incompatible rights. Two people cannot separately be the owners of the same resource, for instance. By contrast, two people can each hold valid but contradictory contract rights to the resource. Although the existing property literature has stressed the “exclusive” nature of property, the various ways in which property is imagined to be exclusive, such as by conferring “rights to exclude,” fail to capture the essence of property as a distinct legal institution. Unlike these alternative conceptions of exclusiveness, the mutual exclusivity principle holds true across the range of different types of property entitlements, including not just fee simple ownership but also security interests and servitudes, and across the range of assets subject to property law, including not just land and physical objects but also intangibles like intellectual property and corporate shares. Recognizing the role of the mutual exclusivity principle yields a number of practical insights. It helps explain various institutional features of property law, such as the system of future interests, the use of possession-based rules, the role of recording systems, and the negative, thing-based structure of property entitlements. It illuminates connections between property and other fields like corporations law and it calls into question aspects of existing doctrine, such as the preferred status of exclusion rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Takings Clause. It also modifies the influential theory that property law is heavily shaped by problems of high information costs: while existing accounts seem to suppose that property law entails relatively high information costs because it imposes a relatively broad set of duties on others, many of the information cost problems identified in the literature actually result from the mutual exclusivity problem, rather than from the breadth of property duties. At a more general level, understanding the centrality of the mutual exclusivity principle suggests some change in direction is called for within the wider property literature. American property scholarship has been preoccupied with questions about the scope and strength of property rights, overlooking the separate problem of ascertaining who happens to hold a given right, a problem distinctive to property law. Property, this Article argues, is at least as much about title chains, patent searches, and creditor priorities as it is about trespass, remedies, and eminent domain.

Creditor protection, judicial enforcement and credit access

ABSTRACTWe investigate the impact of the legal system on whether firms obtain the credit they apply for or not. Data comprise unique information provided directly by 48,590 firms from 11 European countries. We look at the strength of creditor protection, the strength of property rights, the time taken to resolve a dispute, the dispute resolution process’s costs and the number of procedures the plaintiff faces using data provided by the World Bank and the Heritage Foundation. The results suggest that the more efficient the judicial enforcement system is, and the higher the creditor protection is, the lower the probability that the firms are partially or totally denied credit. Our results are robust to selection bias (Heckman selection) as well as different controls and different estimation techniques. We find that these variables have considerable economic impact: the probability of obtaining credit is up to 40% higher in countries with more robust legal systems.

Financial Channels, Property Rights and Poverty: A Sub‐Saharan African Perspective

Studies on the link between financial development and poverty have been inconclusive. Some claim that deeper financial sectors should improve the allocation of capital by allowing entrepreneurs greater access to finance, which should particularly favour the poor. Others argue that improvements in the financial system primarily benefit the rich and politically connected. The literature has also been ambiguous about the channels through which finance may be associated with lower poverty (deposits vs. credit). Looking at a sample of 37 countries in sub‐Saharan Africa from 1992 through 2006, the paper suggests that financial deepening is associated with lower poverty through different channels depending on the strength of property rights. In the absence of well‐defined and enforced property rights, wider access to saving and risk‐sharing instruments is accompanied by a reduction in poverty. Only once property rights grow stronger, is credit associated with lower poverty.

Dynamic Resource Management Under Weak Property Rights: A Tale of Thieves and Trespassers

Using a dynamic framework with strategic interactions, we study the management of a non-renewable natural resource when property rights are generally weak. Under generally weak property rights both the resource stock and the revenues from exploiting it are imperfectly protected, due to trespassing and theft respectively. Trespassing and theft affect the legitimate owner’s extraction decision: extracting the resource today protects the stock against trespassing but exposes the revenues to theft. Moreover, in an evolving institutional setting, the anticipation of a change in the strength of property rights further distorts the extraction decision: e.g., if the owner anticipates stronger property rights in the future, extraction is delayed. Our results indicate that the depletion of the resource is decreasing in the intensity of theft. In addition, when the owner and the trespassers are affected by theft, the depletion of the resource is below (above) the social optimal level if the intensity of theft is high (low).

Mutual Exclusivity and the Nature of Property

This article examines a characteristic of property entitlements that is fundamental to the structure of property systems that has received scant academic attention, a characteristic referred to as the mutual exclusivity principle. According to this principle, a property system does not allow for the existence of incompatible rights. Two people cannot separately be the owners of the same resource, for instance. By contrast, two people can each hold valid but contradictory contract rights to the resource. Although the existing property literature has stressed the “exclusive” nature of property, the various ways in which property is imagined to be exclusive, such as by conferring “rights to exclude,” fail to capture the essence of property as a distinct legal institution. Unlike these alternative conceptions of exclusiveness, the mutual exclusivity principle holds true across the range of different types of property entitlements, including not just fee simple ownership but also security interests and servitudes, and across the range of assets subject to property law, including not just land and physical objects but also intangibles like intellectual property and corporate shares.Recognizing the role of the mutual exclusivity principle yields a number of practical insights. It helps explain various institutional features of property law, such as the system of future interests, the use of possession-based rules, the role of recording systems, and the negative, thing-based structure of property entitlements. It illuminates connections between property and other fields like corporations law and it calls into question aspects of existing doctrine, such as the preferred status of exclusion rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Takings Clause. It also modifies the influential theory that property law is heavily shaped by problems of high information costs: while existing accounts seem to suppose that property law entails relatively high information costs because it imposes a relatively broad set of duties on others, many of the information cost problems identified in the literature actually result from the mutual exclusivity problem, rather than from the breadth of property duties.At a more general level, understanding the centrality of the mutual exclusivity principle suggests some change in direction is called for within the wider property literature. American property scholarship has been preoccupied with questions about the scope and strength of property rights, overlooking the separate problem of ascertaining who happens to hold a given right, a problem distinctive to property law. Property, this article argues, is at least as much about title chains, patent searches, and creditor priorities as it is about trespass, remedies, and eminent domain.

National Culture and Profit Reinvestment: Evidence from Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

We examine the role of national culture—an important informal institution—in the profit reinvestment decisions of small firms in emerging markets. Prior economic development literature focuses on formal institutions as determinants of growth. However, in emerging markets where formal institutions are less developed, informal institutions should have more of a direct versus indirect impact through formal institutions. We find that Schwartz's cultural dimensions of Embeddedness and Hierarchy negatively affect profit reinvestment, and that access to external financing (strength of property rights) is more important for reinvestment decisions in countries with low (high) Embeddedness and Hierarchy.

Why Do Countries Develop Differently? The Effect of National Culture on Profit Reinvestment by Small Firms in Emerging Markets

We examine the role of national culture — an important informal institution — in the profit reinvestment decisions of small firms in emerging markets. Prior economic development literature focuses on formal institutions as determinants of growth. However, in emerging markets where formal institutions are less developed, informal institutions should have more of a direct versus indirect impact through formal institutions. We find that Schwartz’s cultural dimensions of Embeddedness and Hierarchy negatively affect profit reinvestment, and that access to external financing (strength of property rights) is more important for reinvestment decisions in countries with low (high) Embeddedness and Hierarchy.

Restoring Trust: Plachimada, the Human Trust and Anticipatory Negligence as Restorative Justice

This paper argues for proleptic restorative justice in the area of the environment in the form of a ‘human trust’. Drawing inspiration from the Roman public trust, the human trust insists that some ‘goods’ are so important that they can neither be owned nor spoiled; rather, they must be protected. In order to explain this model, water rights will be used as an example, specifically, the case of Plachimada’s battle with Coca-Cola over the use of local ground water in Kerala, India. This case allows consideration of the protection of water for people, the ongoing privatization of natural resources, and the strength of property rights. The human trust questions the merit of seeing the environment as property or in economic terms. Moreover, the human trust urges proleptic restorative justice, as in the case of the environment, restoration after the fact is often impossible. The potential harm is so extreme that one can argue for an action in tort of ‘anticipatory negligence’, a development of the quia timet injunction.

Land titling in China: Chengdu experiment and its consequences

The lack of transfer rights for collectively owned land has led to inefficient land use and rising urban–rural income inequality in China, which calls for property rights reform in the rural area. This article studies the land titling experiment in Chengdu since 2008. Based on field surveys and analysis of data on land transactions, we find that rural residents' income and wealth increased significantly after achieving transfer rights on collectively owned land. The implied land price is found to be correlated with the strength of property rights. With land titling, the market for rural construction land is growing in Chengdu. We argue that a property rights reform that changes the primary role of rural land from welfare to property will provide China with an opportunity to achieve urban–rural harmony and land-use efficiency while maintaining its fast urbanization process.

Investment under Anarchy

This paper presents an experimental test of a 2-player, one-shot game of conflict in which we vary the strength of property rights and the return on investment. Our results suggest that stronger property rights reduce conflict and increase investment. Contrary to intuition, we find increasing the rate of return has practically no effect on investment and that this failure to stimulate investment is largely due to deficiencies in property right institutions.

Quality and the Commons: The Surf Gangs of California

Abstract In open‐access settings, high‐quality resources are lucrative, yet fencing out potential entrants may be very costly. I examine the endogenous creation of property rights, focusing on the incentives that resource quality provides to close the commons. Analytical examples explore the incentives of locals to increase or decrease the strength of property rights conditional on how locals and nonlocals value the quality of the resource. The empirical analysis looks at a unique resource—surf breaks—and estimates the relationship between the exogenous quality of the resource (waves at the surf break) and local attempts to seize the common surf break. Using cross‐sectional data on 86 surf breaks along the southern California coast, this paper finds that a 10 percent increase in quality leads to a 7–17 percent increase in the strength of property rights.

Aquaculture and the Future: Why Fisheries Economists Should Care

This paper explores the relationship between traditional fisheries, fisheries enhancement (ranching), and aquaculture. It evaluates why they are different and why fisheries economists have largely neglected aquaculture issues, despite the fact that most of the growth in fish supply over the past two decades has been the result of aquaculture development. It is argued that the core difference between aquaculture and traditional fisheries is the degree of control; control of the environment, production, and marketing systems. It is further argued that the degree of control is closely related to the strength of property rights. Three examples are presented to provide empirical support for the propositions. They focus on the salmon, lobster, and shrimp industries.

Weak Property Rights and Holdup in R&D

We study how the sequence of financing of R&D varies according to the ease with which property rights over knowledge can be defined. There are two financiers: a venture capitalist (VC) and a corporation. The knowledge acquired in costly research becomes embodied in the researcher's human capital, and she may hold up the financier and walk away with the project to develop it elsewhere. The main results are: (1) When property rights are strong, research is always funded by the VC, development is performed efficiently, and breakaways from the VC to the corporation are observed in equilibrium. (2) When property rights are weak, projects may be financed by the VC or the corporation, or may remain unfunded. (3) When property rights are weak, no breakaways occur in equilibrium; local spillovers and strong product market competition increase the likelihood that research projects will get funding. (4) The equilibrium sequence of R&D finance need not be first‐best efficient. (5) In equilibrium, and controlling for the strength of property rights, VCs finance projects that are more profitable on average.

Weak Property Rights and Holdup in R&D

We study how the sequence of e nancing of RD local spillovers and strong product market competition increase the likelihood that research projects will get funding. (4) The equilibrium sequence of R&D e nance need not be e rstbest efe cient. (5) In equilibrium, and controlling for the strength of property rights, VCs e nance projects that are more proe table on average.

The Politics of Tobacco: Relations Between Farmers and Local Governments in China's Southwest

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Politics of Tobacco: Relations Between Farmers and Local Governments in China's SouthwestYali PengYali Peng Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 36Jul., 1996 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2950373 Views: 29Total views on this site Citations: 11Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright The China JournalPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Michael Rubens Market Structure, Oligopsony Power, and Productivity, SSRN Electronic Journal 83 (Jan 2021).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3800254Ross Barnett, Sihui Peng The Rise of China Tobacco: From Local to Global Player, (Dec 2021): 69–110.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76143-1_3Jialong Zhang, Thi-Thanh-Hiên Pham, Margaret Kalacska, Sarah Turner Using Landsat Thematic Mapper records to map land cover change and the impacts of reforestation programmes in the borderlands of southeast Yunnan, China: 1990–2010, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 31 (Sep 2014): 25–36.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2014.01.006Yi-Wen Cheng, Tak-Wing Ngo The Heterodoxy of Governance under Decentralisation: Rent-Seeking Politics in China’s Tobacco Growing Areas, Journal of Contemporary Asia 44, no.22 (Feb 2014): 221–240.https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2013.874846Hiroki Takeuchi Democratic Institutions, Political Participation, and Authoritarian Rule in China, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2012).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2136356Alan Smart The Strength of Property Rights, Prospects for the Disadvantaged, and Constraints on the Actions of the Politically Powerful in Hong Kong and China, (Jan 2010): 90–111.https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299122_6John S. Dryzek, Leslie Templeman Holmes Post-Communist Democratization, 56 (Sep 2009).https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492112Paul Thiers From Grassroots Movement to State-Coordinated Market Strategy: The Transformation of Organic Agriculture in China, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 20, no.33 (Jun 2002): 357–373.https://doi.org/10.1068/c2vYongshun Cai Between State and Peasant: Local Cadres and Statistical Reporting in Rural China, The China Quarterly 163 (Feb 2009): 783–805.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000014661 Yali Peng Democracy and Chinese Political Discourses, Modern China 24, no.44 (Aug 2016): 408–444.https://doi.org/10.1177/009770049802400403 Literatur, (): 197–219.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90477-1_10