We use NOMINATE (Nominal Three Step Estimation) (Poole and Rosenthal, 1983, 1997) to estimate ideal points for all Supreme Court Justices in Brazil from 2002 to 2012. Based on these estimated preferences we identify the nature of the two main dimensions along which disagreements tend to occur in...

Abstract Compared to the rest of the world, farmers in Brazil rely relatively little on tenant contracts. In agriculture, career mobility is associated with moving up the agricultural ladder from working for wages to renting to owning (Alston, L.J., and J.P. Ferrie. 2005. “Time on the Ladder:...

The impact of regulation on the economic performance of regulated sectors depends crucially on the appropriateness of the design of the regulatory agencies' structure and process, that is, on regulatory governance. Governance refers not to the policies that emerge from regulation, but rather to...

Social contracts about inequality and redistribution are country-specific. We rely on a model of inequality and redistribution where multiple steady states can emerge in given country. We link the model to the recent literature on beliefs and argue that beliefs are a major determinant of which...

Leading scholars in the field of law and economics contribute their original theoretical and empirical research to this major Handbook. Each chapter analyzes the basic architecture and important features of the institutions of property law from an economic point of view, while also providing an...

We present a conceptual framework to better understand the interaction between settlement and the emergence of de facto property rights on frontiers prior to governments establishing and enforcing de jure property rights. In this framework, potential rents associated with more exclusivity drives...