Most studies of tenurial insecurity focus on its effects on investment. This paper studies the hitherto unexplored relationship between tenurial insecurity and land tenancy contracts. Based on distinct features of formal law and customary rights in Madagascar, this paper augments the canonical...

This paper uses bargaining dynamics, administrative politics, and agency theory to examine financial outcomes from New Zealand land reform. Results are inconsistent with payments arising from a bargain in which both the Crown and lessee advocate to their full potential, and are instead...

Land tenure security law in Japan gives leaseholders a dual right: either they can renew the lease at the market rent, or they can make a claim on the landowner to purchase the premises at the market price. There is, however, a market imperfection because of the fact that leaseholders must incur...

Evolving environmental laws have expanded the number of agents with legitimate environmental property rights. Injunctive remedies to increasingly contested exchanges affect the value of the right itself, and therefore the behavior of potentialt raders. Recent amendments to New Mexico Water Law...

TThis paper examines urban land prices within a non-parametric framework with specific interest in the land price gradient with respect to distance from the city center. The land price surface is estimated over a 900-square mile portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is based on...

This paper analyzes the judicial resolution of land-use con icts and then derives a technique to promote mediation of these and other property rights disputes. A simple theory is developed comparing Coasean bargaining over unallocated property rights to nonmarket resolution. The analysis leads...

John Locke’s theory of property, described in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, exerts a strong but often unacknowledged influence on environmental economics, providing justification for many of our discipline’s norms and practices. This paper examines how Locke’s Enlightenment-era...

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....

Although many African countries have recently embarked on revisions of their land legislations to give recognition to customary arrangements and strengthen women’s rights, few studies assess the actual or potential economic impact of such steps. We use data from Uganda to assess the impact of...