More than 200 years after the King sold one of the "King's commons" of Follafoss (located in the current Verran municipality) to urban timber merchants, local people in some ways still behave as if the area is a kind of commons. The paper will outline the history of the transformation of the...

More than 200 years after the King sold one of the “King’s commons” of Follafoss (located in the current Verran municipality) to urban timber merchants, local people in some ways still behave as if the area is a kind of commons. The paper will outline the history of the transformation of...

More than 200 years after the King sold one of the “King’s commons” (Follafoss, located in the current Verran municipality) to urban timber merchants, local people in some ways still behave as if the area is a kind of commons. The paper will outline the history of the transformation of the...

The paper reviews the development of the legal status of Norwegian commons from the first known legislation on commons. The development can be divided into 5 periods. The first period lasted until about 1300. In this period, the commons changed from being a local matter for the chiefs and the...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's historical...

We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the...

We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the...

This chapter develops a unified analytical framework, drawing on and extending the existing literatureon the subject, for studying the role of property rights in economic development. Itaddresses two fundamental and related questions concerning the relationship between propertyrights and...

This paper is about social relations in customary lands for the matrilineal uxorilocal culture of the Lomwe, Nyanja and Yao tribes in Southern Malawi. The study was carried out in the districts of Chiradzulu and Phalombe. Qualitative methods were used to examine local histories and practices to...

The present work is a collection of essays. The first one is new, written for the collection. Then follows 7 separate essays of varying age. They are named * On the classifications of property rights * A property rights perspective on institutional change in the welfare state * On the nature of...