This paper uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th century developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their...

While most studies looking at the consequences of tenurial insecurity on land markets in developing countries focus on the effects of tenurial insecurity on the investment behavior of landowners, this paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and contract...

There is an important literature on the causal relationship between the quality of institutions and macroeconomic performance. This paper studies this link at the micro level by looking at the productivity impacts of land rights. Whereas previous studies used proxies for soil quality and...

Besley and Ghatak (2001) show that public good should be owned by the agent who values the public good most — irrespective of technological factors. In this paper we relax their assumptions in a natural way by allowing the agents to be indispensable and show that relative valuations are not...

Zak & Knack (2001) demonstrate that interpersonal trust substantially impacts economic growth, and that sufficient interpersonal trust is necessary for economic development. To investigate the ability of policy-makers to affect trust levels, this paper builds a formal model characterizing public...

This study investigates the impact of poverty, social capital and land tenure on the adoption of soil fertility management (SFM) and conservation technologies in Uganda. Considering four land management technologies (fallowing, terracing and inorganic and organic fertilizers), the study...

Renewables require support policies to deliver the European 20% target. We discuss the requirements for least cost development and efficient operation and quantify how different schemes (i) allow for the development of a renewable energy technology portfolio; (ii) reduce rent transfers to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the medium‐term tenure option, in capital valuation terms, through an empirical study of 232 households in 39 tenement properties in Barkinsalle and Saukakahuta, two neighborhoods of Minna, Nigeria widely associated with poor households....

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically test whether enforceability mediates the relationship between property rights and investment in housing, using data from land formalization project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Design/methodology/approach The study was cross-sectional in design;...

Purpose – It has been argued that traditional land transfer systems provide disincentives for farmers to trade their land, thus reducing land availability and depressing productivity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of land rentals under customary land ownership in...