We examine a central result in corporate finance – the Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevance proposition – from a Coasian property rights perspective. Building upon the work of Coase, Demsetz and Cheung, we develop an enabling methodology to study the impact of positive Coasian...

Ethnic diversity is endogenous to economic development in the long run. Yet the standard approach in economic research is to treat ethnic diversity as an exogenous factor. By identifying instruments for ethnic diversity, we correct this misspeci ca- tion and establish that ethnic diversity has...

This study deals with fisheries and trade, focusing on developing countries. Fish is globally traded, and for many developing countries, it is an important net export good. In most of these countries, fisheries are often characterized by poorly defined property rights, accompanied by...

This article summarizes the contribution in fisheries economics by the Danish economist Jens Warming and gives a translation of his article “Aalegaardsretten” (The Danish Right to Eel Weir, 1931). Warming, provides an early reference on the problem of open access, precedes Arthur Pigou in...

In this paper we ask whether there is a relationship between property rights and international migration. In order to identify the impact of property rights, we consider a country-wide land certification program, which took place in Mexico throughout the 1990s, and complemented the 1992 Agrarian...

A key event in economic history was the independence of nearly ninety former colonies after World War II. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative evidence, we argue that independence often constituted an institutional disequilibrium that the new regimes reacted to in very different ways. We...

The aim of the present paper is to examine the existence and patterns of systematic within-country inequalities in effective land rights in Rwanda. The results of empirical estimations drawing on data on the land tenure arrangements of over 5,000 Rwandan households indeed suggest systematic...

Much of the improvement in living standards in developed and developing countries alike is attributable to the exploitation of nonrenewable and renewable resources. The problem is to know when the exploitation occurs at rates and with technologies that are sustainable. If they are not...