Strong Private Property Rights Research Articles

Don’t forget institutions: a review essay of The Economics of Prosperity

AbstractExchange, division of labor, technology, capital accumulation, and entrepreneurship all contribute to economic growth. In The Economics of Prosperity, Ritenour explains how each of these concepts allow countries to develop and flourish. This book attempts to provide an extensive survey of Austrian literature surrounding development, while still preserving the author’s opinions around debated issues such as the person and function of the entrepreneur. Ritenour also takes the institution of secure private property rights as a given. This paper argues that strong private property rights must precede any discussion of exchange and specialization, particularly because exchange presupposes ownership. The ruler or ruling elites have to concede some power and uphold a strict rule of law to protect private property rights. Additionally, this paper also extends the discussion to cultural and institutional factors behind innovation and economic development, instead of relying on the Weberian work ethic to explain the Industrial Revolution. In short, economic growth requires good economic principles.

The cost of buying land for protected areas in the United States

Buying land to establish protected areas is a common conservation strategy, particularly in countries with strong private property rights. Accurately accounting for spatial heterogeneity in land cost could lead to large efficiency savings when planning future acquisitions. However, lack of data regarding actual acquisition costs faced by conservation organizations has led planners to rely on more readily available proxies, such as agricultural land value. Using data on nearly 36,000 parcels acquired for conservation by public agencies and land trusts in the continental U.S., we built a model predicting protected area acquisition costs. While costs of land for agriculture or development are useful predictors of variation in protected area acquisition costs, they are not, by themselves, good approximations of those costs. For example, using a more comprehensive combination of variables, our model explained almost four times as much variation in actual acquisition costs as those. We found that agricultural land value loses most of its explanatory power once other predictors are used, confirming that it acts as a partial proxy for actual acquisition costs. We then used an optimization model to compare prioritization recommendations with our new cost estimates to those suggested when relying on agricultural land values alone. Locations of highest conservation return on investment shifted from coastal regions toward the country's center, when using actual cost data. Cost estimates used in conservation planning should be based on actual protected area acquisitions, because the type of properties and motivations of buyers and sellers differ from those of other land transactions.

Neoliberal Education Reform as Black Capitalism

28 | BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 82, NO 1 82 No.1 NEOLIBERAL EDUCATION REFORM AS BLACK CAPITALISM By Mellissa Gyimah and Ebony Rose Capitalism, historically, has been both a figment of the imagination and within arm’s reach for the Black masses in the United States. But, “Black capitalism” as defined by Manning Marable1 connotes several key components that make it unique to the Black community: 1. The accumulation of capital by individual Black entrepreneurs 2. Strategies designed to maintain control over the Black consumer market in the US 3. Collective programs to improve the economic condition of all Blacks within the overall framework of US capitalism There is a contrasting idea that Marable introduces in his classic text How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black Americathat Black capitalism is a “social myth.”2 Marable argues that Black capitalism was “perpetuated by individual Black entrepreneurial ‘success stories’ and by economic barrier established by the system of segregation.”3 Here we have two ideas of Black participation within the White supremacist, anti-Black, political economy4 —one in which Blacks are under the assumption that US capitalism is not structurally racist and that our progress can be accelerated and therefore alleviated by a small handful of Black elites; and on the other hand, one in which Black capitalism is a “social myth.”5 We take a third position that is dialectical and nuanced, but invites readers to come to their own conclusions or propose other arguments. We argue that Blacks know that the US has historically and continues to fail and neglect their cultural, social, political, educational, and economic needs, but absent a clear and viable alternative to the White supremacist racial state, the status quo is somewhat malleable. An example of this is the current educational reform movement and Black participation in it, not as victims who have suffered the disproportionate impacts of a racial neoliberalism, but as social actors and economic agents, too.6 For us, the education reform movement meets the criteria of Black people’s participation in the political economy by a) trying to accumulate social, cultural, and economic capital,7 b) trying to control and have more input into our children’s education by fighting for charter schools and choice,8 and c) trying to improve both the economic and social well-being of Black people. David Harvey9 explains neoliberalism as a theory of political economic practices, proposing that the well-being of humans can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. In this context, neoliberalism is characterized by three traits: the aggressive pursuit of new markets; an effort to scale back or eliminate obstacles to the mobility of capital, including protections for wages; and a reframing of economic stratification and polarization as the effect of individual choices and abilities.10 Neoliberalism presents itself as promoting equality and access across race and class, but this rolled out differently in practice, showing a racialized agenda.11 The complex origins and meanings of charter schools and voucher systems germinate from neoliberal and neoconservative ideology in the 1980s. The voucher and charter systems continue to be extended vis-a-vis a neoliberal agenda at a time when the lives and livelihoods of Black students and families is under a more visible call for Black economic and cultural freedom.12 Therefore, Black people believe that they are reappropriating the neoliberal racialized agenda within the education system, by reconfiguring neoliberal logics of hyper-individualism, color-blindness, free enterprise, privatization of public goods and services, and trade deregulation. Choice, for Black families, becomes the vehicle to provide a better education for their Black children by taking the redistribution of public tax dollars that were disproportionately spent on White children to fund Blackrun schools and neighborhood charter schools, to fit the needs of their families, their communities, and the Black collective.13 BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN VOL. 82, NO. 1 | 29 82 No.1 With all of this in mind, are Black people just being smart and pragmatic by embracing these neoliberal agendas in order to exercise their agency and self-determination? Are they reconfiguring neoliberalism and using it as...

Bank Market Structure, Property Rights and Financial Freedom Effects on Capital Structure: Evidence from Asian Developing Countries

The paper considers direct and indirect impacts of bank concentration, property rights and financial freedom on corporate leverage in 12 Asian developing countries from 2000 to 2013. Our result shows that bank concentration has a directly negative relationship with leverage in these countries but this relationship becomes revertible when bank concentration reaches a given point. Highly concentrated banking market structure favors for profitable firms to obtain debts and is considered as a solution against strong private property rights proxy. A strong private property rights decreases amount of debts financed by banking system and leads firms to prefer using internal funds to obtain protection advantages for newly established assets. Our results indicate stronger degree of financial freedom encourages firms borrow more and supports for profitable firms. Strong degree of financial freedom also reduces the importance of collapse coverage in accessing debts whilst weaker degree of financial freedom leads to an increase of using trade credit as a substitute for bank loans.

‘Here, without English, you are dead’: ideologies of language and discourses of neoliberalism in adult English language learning

ABSTRACTIdeologies of language (and language learning) – in concert with discourses of individualism and meritocracy that characterize neoliberalism – shape pedagogical policies and practices in ways that are consequential for multilingual students all over the developing and developed world. To investigate how such intersections and influences work in adult language teaching/learning settings, this paper critically examines written documents produced by an adult ESL programme, comments made by some of the teachers, and the everyday talk of advanced students in the programme. Understanding neoliberalism as ‘a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’ [Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3], I examine ‘the local political economy of linguistic and cultural resources’ [Heller, M. 2003. “Globalization, the New Economy, and the Commodification of Language and Identity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (4): 473–492, 476] in an adult ESL programme. Findings show that texts and talk alike limit the identities (and trajectories) that are imagined for adult refugee learners of English. In some cases, even well-intended and seemingly ‘neutral’ descriptions of pedagogical goals and priorities might become a subtle but powerful way to further the neoliberal agenda of preparing workers for minimum-wage, entry-level employment across sectors of the economy.

Does immigration impact institutions?

The economics literature generally finds a positive, but small, gain in income to native-born populations from immigrants and potentially large gains in world incomes. But immigrants can also impact a recipient nation’s institutions. A growing empirical literature supports the importance of strong private property rights, a rule of law, and an environment of economic freedom for promoting long-run prosperity. But little is known about how immigration impacts these institutions. This paper empirically examines how immigration impacts a nation’s policies and institutions. We find no evidence of negative and some evidence of positive impacts in institutional quality as a result of immigration.

Does Immigration Impact Economic Freedom?

The economics literature generally finds a positive, but small, gain in income to native‐born populations from immigrants and potentially large gains in world incomes. But immigrants can also impact a recipient nation’s institutions. A growing empirical literature supports the importance of strong private property rights, a rule of law, and an environment of economic freedom for promoting long run prosperity. Comparatively little work has tried to explain economic freedom as a dependent variable. This paper empirically examines how immigration impacts a region’s policies and institutions. We find small but positive increases in institutional quality as a result of immigration.

Does Immigration Impact Institutions?

The economics literature generally finds a positive, but small, gain in income to native-born populations from immigrants and potentially large gains in world incomes. But immigrants can also impact a recipient nation's institutions. A growing empirical literature supports the importance of strong private property rights, a rule of law, and an environment of economic freedom for promoting long run prosperity. Comparatively little work has tried to explain economic freedom as a dependent variable. This paper empirically examines how immigration impacts a region's policies and institutions. We find small but positive increases in institutional quality as a result of immigration.

Responsibilised Resilience? Reworking Neoliberal Social Policy Texts

Responsibilised Resilience? Reworking Neoliberal Social Policy Texts

The Effects of Market-based School Reforms on Students with Disabilities

Neoliberalism is a theory of political economy which holds that the well-being of individuals is best served by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom in a framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of government is limited to keeping people safe and preserving the rules of the market and leaving to the markets services, including education, that it is assumed will be more efficiently delivered by the private sector. Educational policies in the US and in other countries around the world have been strongly influenced by market-based reforms including accountability, high-stakes testing, data-driven decision-making, charter schools, deregulation, and competition among schools. This paper summarizes current theory and research on the effects of market-based schooling practices on students with disabilities. The available evidence indicates that students with disabilities are not well served by market-based reforms and, further, free-market reforms may be fundamentally incompatible with the needs of students with disabilities.Keywords: charter schools; vouchers; educational reform; free-market schooling; school choice; neoliberalism

A Social Movement From Above

A Social Movement From Above Samuel Zipp (bio) Kim Moody. From Welfare State to Real Estate: Regime Change in New York City, 1974 to the Present. New York: The New Press, 2007. xii + 340 pp. Notes, tables, and index. $26.95. For years now, the New York City fiscal crisis has appeared to be an open and shut case. The dominant story of the events of the mid-1970s—offered largely by official participants, journalists and social scientists to this point—is told as a tragedy, a story of a city living beyond its means, an entire culture come to ruin because of its own excesses. New York spent itself into financial ruin, the story goes, by a surfeit of compassion, by incautious indulgence in social welfare programs, by giving free and open education at the City University of New York, by its generous municipal hospital system and housing programs, by paying city workers too much, and by overtaxing middle-class homeowners and business until they all up and left for the suburbs. Not all these accounts had such a hectoring tone—and they differed on some of the particulars—but even a sympathetic chronicler, the journalist Ken Auletta, painted New York as Shakespeare’s Prince Prospero, its eyes turned inward, walled off from an entire country that was forsaking the big city liberalism of the New Deal and Great Society eras.1 This story has won so much explanatory power because it recounts events as they happened. It describes the situation as it appeared in the newspapers and the municipal balance sheets of the day. But behind the headlines and trade press retrospectives, amongst a different group of social scientists and journalists, another account emerged. For these writers, influenced by the New Left and Marxist political economy, the fiscal crisis was the latest episode in a larger class struggle between a new class of business elites on the one hand and workers and minorities on the other. Although they too did not always agree on exact causes or motivations, these dissenters suggested that the bankers, businessmen, and other “prominent citizens” charged with rescuing New York from financial insolvency approached the crisis as a long-sought opportunity to reinstate their power and unseat the influence of public-sector liberalism and worker-friendly union-state cooperation. This account has gained its explanatory power and its slight share of acceptance—mostly amongst other [End Page 286] like-minded academics, writers, and activists—because of its description of the outcome of events.2 After all, New York has been transformed; in the dramatic title of Kim Moody’s account of the city’s recent political economy its once proud “welfare state” has been replaced by a public culture more and more governed by the “real estate” market. With a title like that, it should be no surprise that Kim Moody wants to revive the dissenting account. But Moody, a labor journalist and political scientist, does not set out simply to retell the history of the crisis; instead he tries to show that it was the opening act in a thirty-year process of “regime change” in New York. Since 1974, he argues, New York’s elites have forcibly unseated the city’s “social democratic polity” and replaced it with a “neoliberal” political and economic regime. Moody never adequately defines neoliberalism, relying instead on descriptive catalogues—“restraint on social spending, privatization, deregulation, and most importantly, the reassertion of class power by the nation’s capitalist class are at the center of the neoliberal project”—but he clearly follows theorist David Harvey, who defines it as a “theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (p. 18). Under neoliberalism, public power is to be limited to guiding, encouraging, and underwriting private property rights and the functioning of markets. This vision, Harvey and others have suggested, had its debut in the United States during the New York fiscal crisis, and went on to become the reigning model of economic development in the United States and abroad, shared...

Land market feedbacks can undermine biodiversity conservation

The full or partial purchase of land has become a cornerstone of efforts to conserve biodiversity in countries with strong private property rights. Methods used to target areas for acquisition typically ignore land market dynamics. We show how conservation purchases affect land prices and generate feedbacks that can undermine conservation goals, either by displacing development toward biologically valuable areas or by accelerating its pace. The impact of these market feedbacks on the effectiveness of conservation depends on the ecological value of land outside nature reserves. Traditional, noneconomic approaches to site prioritization should perform adequately in places where land outside reserves supports little biodiversity. However, these approaches will perform poorly in locations where the countryside surrounding reserves is important for species' persistence. Conservation investments can sometimes even be counterproductive, condemning more species than they save. Conservation is most likely to be compromised in the absence of accurate information on species distributions, which provides a strong argument for improving inventories of biodiversity. Accounting for land market dynamics in conservation planning is crucial for making smart investment decisions.

Property rights, ecosystem management, and John Locke's labor theory of ownership

This paper examines John Locke's labor theory of ownership from an ecological perspective, and explores its role in western US property rights disputes. The labor theory of ownership describes how an individual, through application of labor, can justifiably acquire a private property right to the yield of commonly-held natural resources. The presence of ecosystem processes and services beneficial to humans, coupled with equity and no-harm principles, places limits on the extent to which strong labor-based rights can be justified. Property claims to areas that have not undergone physical transformation due to human labor are less-strongly justified. Rather than continue in its inappropriate role in support of strong private property rights in the western US, the labor theory can play a new role in justifying and limiting ecosystem management regulation of private and government-owned lands and who should pay. If ecosystem management regulations prevent, reduce, or eliminate harms to ecosystem services and processes, the costs of such management can justifiably fall on private landowners and private users of public lands. If such programs augment existing ecosystem services and processes, costs should fall on the government.

Environmental Impacts of Enhanced Private Property Rights

There has been concern in western countries over whether strong private property rights empower polluters to the detriment of other citizens. This debate is now playing out in transition economies and developing countries, where the process of moving to a market economy involves strengthening property rights. We review the conflicting arguments and test them using a new international data base. After controlling for income, education and political factors we find that cross-sectional differences in property rights regimes explain some international differences in pollution rates, but changes in property rights laws within a country do not seem to affect emissions.