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In the United States, property debates revolve around two conceptual models of property: the ownership model, originally developed in Europe and now revisited by information theorists and classical-liberal theorists of [...]

3. The Branches of the Property Tree Property law had long treated certain resources as special. For example, water law was a distinct subfield of Roman property law with rules [...]

Abstract: Transformation of land rights from colonial to post-colonial systems in many developing countries was primarily undertaken by two different models: firstly, it was entirely governed by private law to [...]

INTRODUCTION I. THE COHERENCE OF TANGIBLE PROPERTY A. Grey's Disintegration B. Radin's Conceptual Severance II. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY A. The Carryover Hypothesis B. Exclusion C. Rights of Alienation 1. Licensing 2. [...], This Article plays off the title of Thomas Grey's well-known article, The Disintegration of Property, which argued in part that the ceaseless consensual fragmentation and recombination of property rights revealed some inner incoherence of the underlying private property institutions. I take the opposite position and treat this supposed disintegration of private property as evidence of its robust nature, not only for land but for all forms of intellectual property. Low transaction costs facilitate the creation of efficient regimes of property rights. I use this framework to critique modern intellectual property rights cases that limit the use of injunctive relief in intellectual property cases, impose limits on the terms of private licenses of intellectual property, and compromise the protection that intellectual property receives against government confiscation. One common theme links these elements together. Once it is recognized that patents and copyrights should be subject to limited terms, it becomes possible to transfer most of the legal principles from the physical to the intellectual realm. Far from being dead, a unified system of property rights for tangible and intangible assets could be brought to health by intelligent legislative and judicial action.

A theory of resource management where the enforcement of property rights is endogenously determined is developed. The model explains heterogeneity in the effectiveness of resource management and that a change in management regime can be caused by changes in prices, population, or technology.

The boundaries of technology-intensive firms are determined not only by economic considerations, but also by legal constraints. The law plays a dual role: First, by granting property right protection to [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2008.05.002 Byline: Geoffrey M. Hodgson (a)(b), ThorbjA[cedilla]rn Knudsen (a)(b) Keywords: Agent-based model; Institutions; Guilds; Property rights; Property rights enforcement Abstract: The present article focuses on the conditions that allow governments to increase property rights protection because they expect enough income from such action. We develop a behavioral explanation, according to which the answer lies in the growth in the importance, size and wealth of merchant guilds in the medieval era in Western Europe as well as a somewhat surprising effect of volatile price structures. We add to prior research by showing that even uncoordinated embargo pressures among multiple guilds could get medieval rulers to offer high levels of property rights protection. Author Affiliation: (a) The Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10 9AB, UK (b) Strategic Organization Design Unit (SOD).sup.1 , Department of Marketing & Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense Campus, 5230 Odense M, Denmark Article History: Received 7 July 2006; Revised 2 May 2008; Accepted 3 May 2008

The location and control decision of the multinational firm is examined through the insights gained from property-rights approach and the apparatus of international trade theory. Models are presented which generate predictions on how firms organize production across borders.

Byline: Ulf von Lilienfeld-Toal (1) Keywords: incomplete contracts; bargaining; property rights; D23; G32; L22 Abstract: In this paper the effects of selling assets are examined in a property rights model a la Grossmann, Hart and Moore. The possibility of selling an asset gives its owner a bargaining tool which can strengthen his bargaining power under certain circumstances. This offers a form of protection against opportunistic behavior in the hold-up problem, which has not yet been considered in the literature on property rights. With this model it is possible to give a rationale for unconditional joint ownership. Moreover, an explanation for privatization, outsourcing and the existence of 'passive' outside owners can be derived within the model. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Economics, University of Osnabruck, FB 09, D-49069, Osnabruck, Germany Article History: Received Date: 09/08/2001 Online Date: 04/06/2003

This paper addresses the question why investment rates differ so markedly across countries. In the paper a model is laid out explaining why governments in unstable and polarized societies may not have sufficient incentives to undertake legal reform so as to fully protect property rights, and how this may hold back private investment. The model yields testable predictions regarding the link from political instability to the quality of property rights, as well as the link from property rights to investment. These predictions hold up when confronted with cross-country data for around 100 countries. In particular, once I control for the quality of property rights, the different measures of political instability and polarization employed have no direct effect on private investment. Thus, a possible link between political instability and investment is identified. Extensive sensitivity analyses show that the empirical results are robust to an ample of prospective statistical problems. Keywords: Political instability; Polarization; Property rights; Investment

A model in which exclusion is determined by the choice of a property rights enforcement system helped show that both equilibrium and optimum exclusion are imperfect, with some consuming the good without detection. The property right of the provider is thus not fully delineated in the equilibrium as well as the optimum. Equilibrium exclusion was also found to be excessive while an increase in social welfare is imminent if exclusion were reduced.

A model for the optimal investment in a land information system is presented. A society can be viewed as consisting of four economic agents: landowners, tenants, contingent claimants, and the government. The government has the responsibility of improving the cadastre, or the public inventory of data that provides a description of the properties within a jurisdiction based on a study of their boundaries. The model demonstrates that improvements in the cadastre improve property rights. Tenure insecurity is similar to a tax in that it causes housing prices to exceed the social cost of housing to compensate landlords for the likelihood of forfeiting their investment.

We first point out that the recent property-rights literature is based on three assumptions: (1) that contracts are always subject to renegotiation; (2) that the exercise of a property right confers a private benefit and (3) that parties are risk-neutral. Building on Hart-Moore (1999), we provide conditions under which an optimal contract consists of nothing more than an assignment of property rights. We also examine the robustness of some of the literature's standard predictions about asset Ownership to the introduction of mechanisms for eliciting parties' ex post willingness to pay for the assets (such as options or financial markets). To illustrate the issue, we revisit the Hart-Moore (1990) proposition that joint ownership is suboptimal, and argue that ownership by a single party is dominated by joint ownership with put options.