This article illuminates the largely misunderstood relationship between complexity and the regulation of property interests. Specifically, the article presents the "complexity thesis" -- a novel explanatory account of the principle of numerus clausus. The principle of numerus clausus is an...

The legal institution of trust gives rise to two basic sets of question. The first set concerns the respective rights held by the trustee and the beneficiary with respect to the trust property — do these rights feature a structure characteristic of property, contract, or something in between....

It has long been recognized that the quality of property rights greatly impacts the economic development of a country and the use of its natural resources. Since Long (1975), the conventional wisdom has been that ownership risk induces a firm to overuse the stock of a resource. However, the...

Departing from the almost invariably skeptical view of privacy encountered in economics, we re-evaluate privacy from the perspective of economic liberalism. We argue that the idea of freedom is fundamental to economics and that privacy can be best conceived as a specific form of freedom....

The authors combine the agency theory of the firm with risk diversification incentives for insiders. Principal-agent problems between insiders and outsiders force insiders to retain a larger share in their firm than they would under a perfect risk diversification strategy. The authors predict...