The sudden rise in land acquisitions in developing countries during the last decade has drawn the attention of scholars and think tanks. A set of recent papers by Deininger (2011), Deininger (2013), and Arezki et al. (2013) sought to understand the empirical determinants of the land rush. They...

Game theory modeling of the evolution of property rights has paid little attention to the issues of formalization of property rights in land. In developing economies where customary legal arrangements are pervasive, formalization of these rights can play a crucial step in unlocking the growth...

Many conflicts in numerous parts of the developing world can be traced to disputes over land ownership, land use and land degradation. In this paper we test the hypothesis that differences in knowledge structures on land tenure and market systems between different leaders within these countries...

A "conservation good" (such as a tropical forest) is owned by a seller who is tempted to consume (or cut), but a buyer benefits more from conservation. The seller does conserve if the buyer is expected to buy, but the buyer is unwilling to pay as long as the seller conserves. This contradiction...

Every government that controls an exhaustible resource must decide whether to exploit it or to conserve and thereby let the subsequent government decide whether to exploit or conserve. This paper develops a theory of this situation and shows when a small probability that some future government...