Sudden changes in property rights: the case of Australian native title

Recent High Court decisions in Australia relating to Aboriginal native title have the potential to provide insights to the origins of property rights and the possible costs of changes to those rights. This paper investigates these issues by analyzing the court judgements and by means of a stock market event study. It seems that neither the naïve view nor the legal centralist view of property rights can adequately explain Australian native title. Further we do not find significant costs resulting from the change in property rights. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]