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This Article presents a natural rights justification for property rights in a theory called "productive labor theory." Productive labor theory sets forth a Lockean, labor-based case for property. It links [...]

The Malaysian government regards the country's indigenous peoples as 'backward' and in need of 'modernization.' It aims to assimilate them into the so-called main-stream society and to incorporate their lands and resources into national and global markets. These policy objectives leave little scope for indigenous groups to pursue their own life projects. Indigenous communities want to share in the benefits of economic development, but they are not prepared to give up their lands, cultures, and identities to obtain them. They have attempted to ward off the negative consequences of development projects by forming advocacy nongovernmental organizations, engaging in various forms of resistance, and seeking redress of their grievances in the courts. Most of all, they want recognition of their rights to land and place. The efficacy of their agency is severely hampered by a battery of repressive laws and by their own political weakness. Keywords: development, indigenes, land rights, Malaysia, nongovernmental organizations., Indigenous peoples of striking cultural diversity occupy a great variety of biophysical environments from the high Arctic to the South Pacific, and from Amazonia to Australia. They include the Inuit [...]

For property rights to be upheld, people need to be able to judge how ownership is established. Previous research suggests that people may judge that the first person to possess an object establishes ownership over it. This article proposes and tests an alternative account, which claims that people decide who owns an object by judging who was probably necessary for the object to be possessed. Participants read stories in which one character pursues an object (e.g., an animal being hunted, a gem jutting out of a high cliff), which a second character then captures. Judgments about which character owns the object depended on which character was plausibly necessary for capturing the object. The findings support the 'necessary for possession' account and suggest that people's judgments about ownership likely depend on counterfactual reasoning or on processes akin to those used to make judgments about causality.

Most research on common property focuses on common-pool goods, which are characterized by difficulty of exclusion and vulnerability to depletion (subtractability). Few studies have addressed common property arrangements for 'private goods,' which are subtractable but characterized by ease of exclusion. In order for a private good to be managed successfully as common property, institutions must exist to guarantee the access of eligible appropriators despite its ease of exclusion and susceptibility to individual monopolization. Drawing on research in an indigenous Lenca community in western Honduras, this case study explores the communal management of scarce, spatially concentrated claybeds, sand deposits, and outcroppings of colored soils. All of these goods are necessary for artisanal pottery production, which is regarded as a cultural patrimony by the community. The study shows that socioeconomic, institutional, and spiritual dimensions interact to maintain communal management of these 'private goods.' The importance of pottery production to the local culture and economy facilitates and reinforces common property institutions associated with these goods. The evidence indicates that when tare or scarce 'private goods' are integral to a people's livelihoods and culture, common property arrangements can be an effective approach to management. Key words: common property, nonrenewable natural resources, institutions, Lenca, Honduras

A study was conducted to investigate how corporate transparency affects the efficiency of industrial investment and growth. A difference-in-difference methodology is used, and a within-country variation of investment efficiency is examined. It is concluded that corporate transparency plays an important role in the development of well-functioning financial markets.

In many business transactions, labor-management relations, international conflicts, and welfare-state reforms, bargainers hold strong entitlements that are often generated by claims that are not feasible anymore. These entitlements seem to shape negotiation behavior considerably. By using the novel setup of a 'bargaining with claims' experiment, we provide new systematic evidence tracking the influence of entitlements and obligations through the whole bargaining process. We find strong entitlement effects that shape opening offers, bargaining duration, concessions, and (dis)agreements. We argue that entitlements constitute a 'moral property right' that is influential independent of negotiators' legal property rights. Key words: moral property rights; entitlements; fairness judgments; bargaining with claims; self-serving bias; experiment, 1. Introduction In many negotiations, bargainers bring strong entitlements to the bargaining table. These entitlements are often rooted in historical claims, custom, or the status quo (see, e.g., Kahneman et [...]

We estimate the technical efficiency of collective-owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) relative to other types of enterprise, taking into account the net work rate for equipment and machines. Out aim is to investigate whether the vaguely specified property rights of these enterprises caused them to decline in technical efficiency just before they underwent a massive privatisation programme in Wuxi City and Jiangsu province, starting in 1998. Our results cast doubt on the view that vagueLy specified property rights became inconsistent with productive or technical efficiency in Wuxi City. It follows that privatisation of collective-owned TVEs may be insufficient to improve their productivity performance from now on. Keywords: O53, P21, P32 JEL Classifications: collective-owned TVE, property rights, technical efficiency, INTRODUCTION We study below whether the relative technical efficiency of collective-owned township and village enterprises (TVEs) declined shortly before massive privatisation began in China. In particular, we test whether these [...]

Some evidences and implications, drawn from the ongoing attempts by developing countries, to establish formal property rights systems for land in support of a policy to spur economic growth are discussed. It is stated that even under the most favorable conditions for reform, policies based on voluntary reform are unlikely to achieve their full potential.

It is found that in China, private enterprises face lot of problems as compared to firms with local government ownership. Also, a twist to the existing property rights literature by capturing two features in the government-management relation is analyzed.

We explore the substitutability of formal and informal property rights using new survey data from Ecuador, where households have both formal and informal claims to urban residential property. We develop a model of property transactions that distinguishes between transferable and non-transferable claims, and show how this distinction affects the interpretation of hedonic price regressions. The unconditional effect of title is to raise properties' value by 23.5%. However, we also find that informal property rights can substitute effectively for formal property rights, and suggest that titling programmes should be targeted at young disorganised communities if they are to benefit the recipients.

Securing legal property rights for an indigenous population appears to have affected land use around the Isthmus of Panama. When considering national park deforestation, geography seems to be a more significant factor than legal protection.

An assessment is made on the role of government in managing common-pool resources and property rights. Regimes examined include private, community, and state-based governance, and focus on resource stock and flow, resource characteristics, institution costs, and management objectives.

Byline: E. Kevin Kelloway (1), Julian Barling (2), Anthony E. Carroll (2) Abstract: We report two studies of property rights to jobs. Perceptions of having or not having a property right were manipulated in a vignette in the first study. Having a property right was viewed as being associated with increased commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors, willingness to sue for wrongful dismissal and decreased absenteeism and turnover in a sample of 202 undergraduates. In a second, self-report study property rights were associated with increased organizational commitment, increased perceptions of control at work, and organizational tenure in a sample of 95 clerical employees. Author Affiliation: (1) Psychology Department, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada (2) Queen's University, Canada Article History: Registration Date: 08/09/2004