We present a conceptual framework to better understand the interaction between settlement and the emergence of de facto property rights on frontiers prior to governments establishing and enforcing de jure property rights. In this framework, potential rents associated with more exclusivity drives...

I investigate how the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land formalization reform in rural Western Africa affects villagers' cooperativeness and trust. With the reform, land plots traditionally characterized by collective property and informal possession are mapped, parcels...

Most measures of inequality focus on the distribution of income and resources. A potentially important additional source of inequality stems from unequal property rights protection. The aim of the present paper was to examine the existence and patterns of systematic within-country inequalities...

Up to one quarter of the world’s population is estimated to be landless, including 200 million people living in rural areas. For many of these people, the condition of landlessness threatens the enjoyment of a number of fundamental human rights. Access to land is important for development and...

We study a large-scale land titling reform implemented as a randomized control-trial to isolate its causal effects on litigation. The reform consisted of demarcating land parcels, registering existing customary rights, and granting additional legal protection to rightholders. We find that, ten...

This Article provides an introduction to land-related legal issues facing tribal governments and Indigenous peoples in the United States and is intended to encourage deeper and more widespread engagement on these important topics. Forced property law reforms have been used throughout history as...

Property rights are powerful. They fundamentally shape both the physical world and our social relations within it. Property choices impact how land and other resources are used (or conserved) and who has access to those resources (or who is excluded). At the same time, cultural discourses about...

The world today is afflicted by inequality of wealth created in large part by monopolistic ownership of land. Across the globe, in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Yangon, Johannesburg, and London, landowners in control of urban real estate in hot job markets have created a housing shortage. Hong...

This J.S.M. thesis examines whether Costa Rican legal rules in the 1970s regulating renters, sharecroppers, and others who farmed land that they did not own were functional or not in promoting development. It considered the history of agricultural activity and pattern of land ownership from the...

Many Sub-Saharan African countries are embarking on major changes in their property rights law with the goal of achieving more vigorous economic growth and alleviating poverty. Uganda has been at the forefront of these changes in property rights in land with Constitutional change and a new land...