This study aims at explaining property right changes in selected areas of Afar region in Ethiopia. Based on primary and secondary data, explanations are given on the existing types of land use arrangements and how the traditional communal rights of pastoralists have been changing. Both communal...

When applying New Institutional Economics (NIE) to empirical studies one is confronted with typical problems of operationalization. To illustrate some of these problems, this paper utilizes a comparative institutional analysis of the German Water and Soil Associations and alternative governance...

There is little empirical evidence concerning the effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) on a technologically advanced developing country. Complete enumeration of the Mexican maize breeding industry showed that, contrary to the hypothesis that IPR would provide, in a technologically...

Today, decentralised sewage disposal plants are increasingly accepted as permanent solution in rural areas. However, it is still debated in which cases they are more appropriate than central systems. The following paper deals with technological and institutional aspects of this problem. It poses...

Die Mehrdimensionalitat des sozialwissenschaftlichen Verstandnisses von Institutionen stellt eine besondere Herausforderung an deren Analyse. Woraus bestehen Institutionen? Die umfangreiche Literatur uber Institutionen bietet mehrere Kategorisierungen an, die uber die analytische Differenzierung...

It is often argued that environmental scarcity was a trigger and source of violent conflict, in particular in African countries. At the root of such arguments is a simple environmental determinism, which understands scarcity as undermining co-operative relationships between competing resource...

The transition process in central and eastern Europe (CEE) had a profound effect on how individuals interact. Economic and social institutions have changed, requiring an adaptation process by individuals in the move toward a market economy. How each individual accesses, manipulates and uses...

Functional overlap in the jurisdiction and competencies of international agreements can lead to incomplete and contradicting regulation, which erodes benefits form international cooperation. The framework developed in this paper seeks to further the theoretical analysis of the domestic and...

With regard to agri-environmental schemes under Regulation (EC) No. 1257/1999 in Europe a rather divers uptake as well as a lack of effectiveness and efficiency of these current schemes can be observed. In contrast to most of the related literature, we suggest that the ineffectiveness and...

In this paper agricultural land markets are regarded as organisations, which allows to take the effect of the social embeddedness of exchange into account. The markets-as organizations approach suggests that markets are governed by an internal "constitution" containing rules on dissemination of...