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Few ideas and activities have received as hyperbolic praise as that presented by Hernando de Soto on informality. Nobel laureates in economics, presidents of various countries, important magazines, and multilateral organizations have endorsed this author's impulse towards the official registration of the property or the poor, particularly, their homes, as the key to launching a worldwide economic revolution from below. In this paper we present the institutional backing of those ideas, the analytic substance behind the main arguments involved, the descriptive accuracy of the institutions operating in the Third World, and the results of their application. In this way, we evaluate the relationship between the spread and power of an idea and its formal content, and its effectiveness in changing the world of the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]