Does ownership status of agricultural land determine farmers' soil use behaviour? Why (not)? We investigate this old question using multiple methods and data. We apply econometric analysis to plot-level data to determine whether planting decisions differ between rented and owned plots. In...

Rental shares of agricultural land are increasing in many countries, as are soil degradation and erosion. Theory suggests that these trends may be correlated, yet empirical findings are ambiguous. This research investigates the relationship between land tenure and farmers' soil management and...

This article discusses and analyzes the sources and methods used by Leon Duguit in constructing the social-obligation or social-function norm of property as set out in an influential series of lectures in Buenos Aires published in 1912. The work of Henri Hayem has been underappreciated in 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...

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 Mexican land reform, one of the most sweeping in the world, proceeded in two steps: it granted peasants highly incomplete property rights on more than half of the Mexican territory starting in 1914, creating strong economic and political dependence for beneficiaries on the ruling political...

In an open economy with common property resources at the community level, marriage and migratory decisions crucially depend on inheritance rules on the commons. Motivated by the traditional management of the commons in the Italian Alps, we present a model that fits the evolution of property...

Brazil holds a large proportion of all indigenous land in the world, much of it in the Amazon. The rights of indigenous people to their land has been formally recognized since colonial times and was significantly strengthened in the 1988 Constitution, providing the legal basis for several...

In this study, we argue that while community forest management is effective in protecting forest resources as argued by Ostrom, it may fail to provide proper incentives to take care of such resources because of collective sharing of benefits of forest management. This study proposes a mixed...

There are severe issues of public open space (POS) underinvestment and overexploitation. However, few studies have been conducted on the property rights structure and its impacts on rural commons governance, specifically concerning local neighbourhood residential POS quality and sustainability....