Of the many powers granted to federal, state, and local governments through the Constitution of the United States, eminent domain is possibly the strongest and most imposing, at least as it relates to citizens’ property rights. This dissertation explores several large-scale public undertakings...

Auslandsinvestitionen unterliegen heutzutage vielfach dem Schutz eines internationalen Investitionsschutzabkommens. Der in diesen Abkommen regelmäßig verankerte Schutz von Investitionen vor entschädigungsloser Enteignung kann mit staatlichen Maßnahmen zum Zwecke des Klimaschutzes in Konflikt...

We use a dataset of the entire population of English Parliamentary enclosure acts between 1750 and 1830 to provide the first causal evidence of their impact. Exploiting a feature of the Parliamentary process that produced such legislation as a source of exogenous variation, we show that...

The sinister turn in international law can be defined as the paradox created by successful decolonization efforts when 1) the colonization and decolonization are/were characterized by race, such as in the case of former apartheid states, 2) decolonization reverses the political and legal...

Jeder, der sich mit Geld und Banken im Deutschen Reich in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts beschäftigt, kennt den Namen Alfred Lansburgh. Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung nannte ihn "in Sachen des Geldes vielleicht einen der klügsten Menschen, die in Deutschland je gelebt und...

According to classic corporate governance theory, strengthening large shareholders' cash flow rights without changing their control rights should reduce expropriation incentives by better aligning their interests with those of minority shareholders. However, due to the weaker investor...

This Comment provides an argument for applying a wellbeing-analysis approach to eminent domain compensation, discussing the inefficiencies that result from compensating individuals with only the fair market value of their properties and arguing that a well-being-analysis approach provides a way...

We show that armed actors refrain from using their power to arbitrarily steal from an economy if, and only if, the armed actors’ property rights over stealing from that economy are secure. By 2009, armed actors taxed, administered, and protected various villages in Democratic Republic of the...

I study the political consequences of state expropriation of agricultural land in rural China by using national individual-level panel data for the period 2010-2018. Comparing outcomes before and after expropriation with changes among individuals not experiencing expropriation, I find that...

We examine how the market values operating assets in the presence of time-varying ex ante risk that these assets may be tunneled away. We analyze pairs of Chinese publicly listed firms and their non-listed parents and examine the market valuation of current assets (cash balances, trade...

This Chapter explores the protection against expropriation under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and compares it to similar provisions in EU Law and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The aim of this analysis is to test the hypothesis that EU law offers sufficient protection to...

Fraus legis – defrauding or evading the application of law – is a phenomenon well-known to students of private law, but its application in public law, including constitutional law, remains largely unconsidered. To consider whether a transaction, or, it is submitted, an enactment, is an...

This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a...

This paper develops a theory of capital movements in the presence of potential expropriation. The threat of expropriation is derived from utility maximizing behavior by host countries. Potential investors, anticipating this behavior, modify their investment plans to avoid expropriation. When-...

Which of the three legal doctrines of public use, just compensation, and due process is the most effective in constraining abuses of eminent domain power? This paper addresses this question for the first time and presents the first-ever systematic investigation of the judicial review of eminent...

Response to Stewart E. Sterk & Michael C. Pollack, A Knock on Knick‘s Revival of Federal Takings Litigation.As Professors Sterk and Pollack noted, “many have cheered” the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Knick v. Township of Scott that overruled the second prong of Williamson...

Times of emergency call for drastic measures. These steps may include the physical takeover of privately-owned assets by the government for a certain period of time and for various purposes, aimed at addressing the state of emergency. When will such acts amount to a taking, and what compensation...

Like several countries, the global pandemic, COVID-19, has hit India quite badly. In order to stop the spread of the disease, India has imposed a stringent national lockdown. It may adopt several other regulatory measures in future. This paper examines that if foreign investors bring...

We examine the effects of controlling shareholder stock pledge on corporate acquisition decisions and associated performance. Consistent with our aggravated expropriation hypothesis, we find that pledging firms in China initiate more takeovers, but these acquisitions conducted by pledging firms...

Real business cycles in China are different than in many other countries, including consumption being more volatile than output and uncorrelated with investment. To study whether Chinese institutions can account for these features, we expand the standard real business cycle model with private...

We investigate the implications of government versus private ownership for bank minority shareholders. Specifically, we use unique data to examine whether the stock prices of government-owned and family-owned banks, equally engaged in related lending, differently react to loan announcements. Our...

This paper investigates how the degree of managerial expropriation affects equity volatility of individual firms. We develop a corporate finance model with endogenous financing policies and manager-shareholder agency conflicts, and identify two countervailing forces. First, in response to...

Is it justified for states to appropriate private property rights? If so, should governments regulate or expropriate? Competing models predict that government power of appropriation causes underinvestment, over investment, and growth. We use random assignment of U.S. federal court judges setting...

This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental institutional reform. French districts with a...

Introduction : Turning Land into Capital / Philip Hirsch, Kevin Woods, Natalia Scurrah and Michael Dwyer -- Land and Capital across Borders : A Regional Geopolitics / Natalia Scurrah and Philip Hirsch -- Legacies in Land Governance : Colonialism, War and Socialism / Kevin Woods, Michael Dwyer...

We examine the optimal financing of infrastructure when governments have limited financial commitment and can expropriate rents from private sector firms that manage infrastructure. While private firms need incentives to implement projects well, governments need incentives to limit...

"Set in the resource frontier of northeastern Turkey, Bulldozer Capitalism studies the rise and decline of an anti-dam/anti-displacement campaign and the political responses to other extractive projects that it helped to shape in its aftermath. The book shows that people can accommodate their...

The purpose of this paper is to examine propping and tunnelling in group firms which have booked losses and performed badly in past years. We offer partial explanation to the group survival puzzle; that under institutional motivations such as avoidance of delisting and refinancing risks, group...

We use a dataset of the entire population of English Parliamentary enclosure acts between 1750 and 1830 to provide the first causal evidence of their impact. Exploiting a feature of the Parliamentary process that produced such legislation as a source of exogenous variation, we show that...

Forcible acquisition of agricultural land to facilitate accumulation by dispossession attempts like setting up of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) is fiercely resisted by farmers in India. These agita- tions may determine the political viability of governments. The ability if the state to enact and...

This paper examines the microeconomic determinants of residential real estate prices in Caracas, Venezuela, using a private database containing 17,526 transactions from 2008-2009. The particular institutional characteristics of many countries in Latin America, and Venezuela in particular, where...

On April 16, 2012 the Argentine Federal Government decreed the intervention of YPF. Its share price declined 29% the day after. Two weeks later the Argentinean Parliament approved the expropriation of 51% of the YPF shares owned by Repsol. We prepared a month ago the case “Valuation of an...

The “VERAVAL Valuation” forecasts a great future for ElectraBul with solid customer, sales and FCF growth. Between 2010 and 2019 the customer base is expected to grow by 60%, sales in MWh by 72%, etc. However, the “VERAVAL Valuation” concludes that the value of ElectraBul shares in April...

This case presents the valuation of the shares of an electric company in an emerging country. It permits the reader to identify errors and recalculate the valuation.ElectraBul was expropriated by the government in April 2010. The government said that ElectraBul shareholders should be paid a fair...

On April 16, 2012 the Argentine Federal Government decreed the intervention of YPF and expropriated of 51% of the YPF shares owned by Repsol. Repsol had a 57.4% stake. A tribunal will determine the compensation Repsol will receive for its YPF shares. You are required to help the tribunal. What...