The Economics Of Property Rights Property Rights And Economic Performance

Property rights form the relationship between individuals and their goods. They are the cornerstone of the pricing, supply and fair allocation of scarce resources between people. This is a collection of writings from the founders of the field, including James M. Buchanan and Douglass C. North.

This is a study of the way individuals organise the use of resources in order to maximise the value of their economic rights over these resources.

This book presents a critical reassessment of theories of property rights, in response to conflicts and competition between different groups, and the state. It does so by taking an institutional political perspective to analyse the structures of property rights, with a focus on a series of case studies from Bangladesh. In doing so, the book highlights the importance of property rights for economic growth, why developing countries often fail to design property rights conducive for economic development, and the strategies required for designing an efficient structure of rights. Since property rights falls within the domain of Law and Economics, the book ventures to explain legal issues from an economic perspective, resulting in empirical analysis that comprises both legal and non-legal cases.

Property Rights in Land widens our understanding of property rights by looking through the lenses of social history and sociology, discussing mainstream theory of new institutional economics and the derived grand narrative of economic development. As neo-institutional development theory has become a narrative in global history and political economy, the problem of promoting global development has arisen from creating the conditions for ‘good’ institutions to take root in the global economy and in developing societies. Written by a collection of expert authors, the chapters delve into social processes through which property relations became institutionalized and were used in social action for the appropriation of resources and rent. This was in order to gain a better understanding of the social processes intervening between the institutionalized ‘rules of the game’ and their economic and social outcomes. This collection of essays is of great interest to those who study economic history, historical sociology and economic sociology, as well as Agrarian and rural history.

In the end, the book provides a fresh, comprehensive overview of an intriguing subject, accessible to anyone with a minimal background in economics. (An introductory chapter introduces the handful of assumptions embedded in the text's economics and law).

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Economics - History, grade: 1,7, Humboldt-University of Berlin, 6 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The paper will give a general overview on Douglass C. North's theoretical work during the last twenty years on economic history as well as on new institutions economics and institutional change. While the paper is more concerned on how North approaches the origin and development of the state via property rights it also will take his theory of institutional change and the way he emphasizes economies of scale and transaction costs into account. Part One of this paper will give a short introduction into the topic of the philosophy of the state. This will be followed by North's argumentation and thus his philosophy of the state derived in his numerous works. To begin with, Part Two of this paper gives an introduction into North's argumentation on the role of property rights for economic growth. Part Three will then explain what role government has in economic organization. The role of economies of scale for property rights and fiscal policies will be looked upon thereafter in Part Four. The circle will then be closed by linking economic growth and property rights with the development of the state. Analogously to North's argumentation in his book "The Rise of the Western World" the paper takes a section of ten millennia in economic history in order to explain the tension between property rights and the role of government as North sees it. North's model of the state will then be introduced in Part Six, followed by a short introduction into his Theory of Institutional Change in Part Seven of this paper. A short critique will be given at the end.

What guidance does academic research really provide to economic policy development? The critical and analytical surveys in this volume investigate links between policies and outcomes by surveying work from broad macroeconomic policies to interventions in microfinance. Asserting that there are no universal correspondences between policies and outcomes, contributors demonstrate instead that only an intense familiarity with the development context and the universe of applicable economic models can generate successful policies. Getting cause-and-effect right is essential for policy design and implementation. With the goal of drawing researchers and policy makers closer, this volume highlights our increasing understanding of ways to combine economic theorizing with careful, thoughtful empirical work. * Presents an accurate, self-contained survey of the current state of the field * Summarizes the most recent discussions, and elucidates new developments * Although original material is also included, the main aim is the provision of comprehensive and accessible surveys