Der ehemalige Mitarbeiter der Weltbank ist heute als wirtschaftspolitischer Berater tätig. Für de Soto greifen die traditionellen Erklärungsmuster für die negativen Begleiterscheinungen der Globalisierung zu kurz. In vielen unterentwickelten Ländern gebe es riesige Vermögenswerte, die...

A model of resource exploitation when private ownership requires costly enforcement is developed. Enforcement costs are endogenized as the outcome of a game between a resource owner and illegal extractors. I find that two instruments are used to deter illegal extraction: policing efforts and...

A central challenge in securing property rights is the subversion of justice through legal skill, bribery, or physical force by the strong — the state or its powerful citizens — against the weak. We present evidence that the less educated and poorer citizens in many countries feel their...

This paper is an attempt to contribute to the literature on the relationship between economic development and democratic institutions. The paper focuses on civil liberties and interprets them in a framework in which there is no dividing line drawn between “civil” and “property” rights....

I test the land and labor market effects of a property rights reform that computerized rural land records in Pakistan, making digitized records and automated transactions accessible to agricultural landowners and cultivators. Using the staggered roll-out of the program, I find that while the...