I analyze the basis of the market economy in classical Rome, from the perspective of personal-versus-impersonal exchange and focusing on the role of the state in providing market-enabling institutions. I start by reviewing the central conflict in all exchanges between those holding and those...

During the hundred-year period from about 1320 to about 1420, the Florentine woollen cloth industry underwent two closely connected crises. The first crisis was the consequence, direct and indirect, of the ravages of warfare and falling population, afflicting the entire Mediterranean basin and...

This (revised) study seeks to examine the rise, expansion, and ultimate decline of the Italian wool-based textile industries over a period of six centuries (from ca. 1100 to ca. 1730). An international trade model combining transaction costs and comparative advantage is employed to explain the...

Governments and international development agencies often fail in their efforts to build and reform property and company registries. They implement misguided policies rooted in a poor understanding of the role that registries play in the modern economy. This work aims to remedy this situation by...

This chapter proposes two hypotheses on the publicity requirement and the limitations of possession to provide information for legal titling. It then tests these hypotheses by examining how legal systems deal with possession in movable and immovable property, and comparing actual and documentary...

Adopting a simplistic view of Coase (1960), most economic analyses of property rights disregard both the key advantage that legal property rights (that is, in rem rights) provide to rightholders in terms of enhanced enforcement, and the difficulties they pose to acquirers in terms of information...

In this paper, we design the optimal contract when two agents can collude under asymmetric information. They have correlated types, produce complementary inputs and are protected by limited liability. Therefore, a joint manipulation of reports allows them to internalize informational and...

The traditional theory of monopolistic screening tackles individual self-selection but does not address the possibility that buyers could form a coalition to coordinate their purchases and to reallocate the goods. In this paper, we design the optimal sale mechanism which takes into account both...

Demand for law professionals in the conveyancing of property is decreasing because of market and institutional changes. On the market side, many transactions feature large, well-known parties and standardized transactions, which make professionals less effective or necessary for protecting the...

This chapter analyzes titling institutions and the regulation of supporting conveyancing services. After examining the tradeoff of enforcement benefits and consent costs posed by property rights, it explains how different public titling systems (privacy, recording and registration) try to solve...