Governments often have the power to take property rights from private citizens but their responsibility to pay compensation is typically not well specified. In this paper we examine how the compensation rule adopted by a country affects both private investment decisions and takings decisions. We...

We modify the Diamond-Dybvig model studied in Green and Lin to incorporate a self-interested banker who has a private record-keeping technology. A public record-keeping device does not exist. We find that there is a trade-off between sophisticated contracts that possess relatively good...