In the game theory literature, Garrett Hardin's famous allegory of the tragedy of the commons has been modeled as a variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma, labeled the Herder Problem (or, sometimes, the Commons Dilemma). This brief paper argues that important differences in the institutional...

This paper examines the claim that the land rental market can be an effective means of redistributing access to, if not ownership of, land to the rural poor, using Paraguay as our model. The land sales market is also examined. The land rental market in Paraguay's rural areas is found to be very...

The objectives of the paper are to show how the sustainability of urban settlements can be improved by treating as a variable the design of: (a) property rights to realty, corporations and currencies and: (b) their communication and control governance architecture. System science provides the...

This paper uses provincial macro-data from the mid-1980s onwards to investigate the determinants of land-use choice in rural China, by paying a particular attention to the decision to plant trees as competing with agriculture. The evidence supports the importance of economic motivations in the...

While the visible structures of cities may be designed, the invisible structures of how land, buildings, enterprises and money are owned and controlled are accepted as a given. This paper argues that to sustain humanity on the planet, the invisible structures of society need to follow the...

The perception of high crime rates in downtowns has hindered the revitalization of downtown shopping districts and adjacent residential areas. This paper presents a better methodology for measuring crime in commercial shopping districts, replacing the conventional method of quoting crimes per...

Theoretical models on moral hazard provide competing predictions on the relationship between pay-for-performance incentives and risk. These predictions are derived under the assumptions that agents are homogeneous and risk is exogenous. This paper tests the incentive-risk relationship by means...

In the 1980's the Thai government tried to legalize squatters by issuing special titles that restricted the sale and rental of the land. Using data from 2,874 farming households collected in 1997, the author finds that in places where these government titles where issued, leased plots are more...

In simple, two period models of the development of land, K. Arrow and A. Fisher, and C. Henry have shown that when the decision to develop is (i) irreversible, and (ii) indivisible, a land developer who disregards the possibility of acquiring new information about the result of land development...