Abstract I met Steve in August 1968 when he and I were assigned as office mates in the old Social Science Building of the University of Chicago. Steve was visiting Chicago, finishing up his book on sharecropping – we had many talks about it – and I was just starting as an assistant...

Abstract It was 1968 and I was studying economics with Armen Alchian at UCLA. It was my first year as a graduate student and Armen was teaching the Microeconomics course to all the first year grad students. While I had an undergraduate degree in economics, Armen was the first professor I had...

Abstract It is an intimidating challenge, both emotionally and intellectually, to write something of enough worth to celebrate the 80th birthday of Steven Cheung and to honor the memory of Professor Ronald Coase. Both are serious scholars. Coase was a devoted scholar; nothing interested him...

Abstract Urbanization is a process in which separated and dispersed property rights become concentrated in a specific location. This process involves a large volume of contracts to redefine and rearrange various property rights, producing various and high transaction costs. Efficient...

Abstract There are fixed costs in production. One has to assemble rents earned in production lines to cover them. There are also fixed costs in consumption. Consumers assemble surpluses to cover them. In either case, rent assemblage could either be a quantity solution, a quality solution, or a...

Abstract Contracts, as a form of institutions, have an influence on efficiency. Other conditions being the same, different contracts lead to different efficiency. Unlike property rights which require compulsory implementation by law, contracts rely mainly on the contracting parties’ voluntary...

Abstract Waste picking is an informal economy activity that has attracted a large amount of research across the social sciences. We contribute to the debate on informality and its institutional determinants through case study analysis. We present a unique partnership between waste pickers and...

Abstract In the last years, several countries implemented policy interventions to entitle urban squatters, encouraged by the results of studies showing large welfare gains from entitlement. We study a natural experiment in the allocation of land titles to very poor families in a suburban area of...