During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, fixed-rent tenancy gradually replaced sharecropping as the dominant form of land tenancy in China. This paper hypothesizes that the secular shift in land tenure was an adaptation to the change in land utilization system towards more intensive cropping. To test...

We examine three reforms to property rights introduced by the United States in the Philippines in the early 20th century: the redistribution of large estates to their tenants, the creation of a system of secure land titles, and a homestead program to encourage cultivation of public lands. During...

One of the main objectives of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is to facilitate world’s trade and production. It enforces legally binding multilateral agreements on trade in goods, services and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. The Trade Related Intellectual...

In their 1992 paper, Schlager and Ostrom presented a property rights framework characterized by nested, cumulative attributes. It has become arguably the most ubiquitous framework for analysis of natural resources and property rights. We revisit their contribution and discuss how the framework...

As revived private-sector interest in African agriculture aggravates commercial pressures on land, the national, international and transnational legal frameworks define the rights, obligations, enforcement mechanisms and arenas for negotiation and contestation among the manifold actors brought...

What is the impact on voting behavior of strengthening property rights over agricultural land? To answer this question, we use the 14-year nationwide rollout of Mexico's land certification program (Procede) and match affected communities (ejidos) before and after the change in property rights...

This paper addresses the question of how farmers displaced by acquisition of agricultural land for the purpose of industrialization ought to be compensated. Prior to acquisition, the farmers are leasing in land from a private owner or local government with a legally mandated sharecropping...

A fundamental aspect of private property is the right to exclude trespassers or squatters. Nonetheless, in all 50 states a trespasser can acquire ownership by continuously occupying a parcel of land until the statutorily set period of limitations runs out. Although these adverse possession...

Property rights are fundamental to economic analysis. There is, however, no consensus in the economic literature about what property rights are. Economists define them variously and inconsistently, sometimes in ways that deviate from the conventional understandings of legal scholars and judges....