Using a variety of statistical approaches, we show that the relationship between property rights and growth is nonlinear; stronger enforcement of property rights raises growth up to a point before growth begins to decline. We provide a simple theoretical rationale for this conclusion using a...

The paper traces a fairly continuous line of argument about the institutional mechanisms by which intellectual property is produced and maintained in an advanced, commercial society. What the author calls the Chicago intellectual property rights tradition offers a rich and suggestive...

This article focuses on the definition of wine as a commodity and as an object of fiscal policy in Madrid during the XIXth century. Against the assumption of neoinstitutional perspectives, for which the definition of a product -being a parcel of property rights- has positive effects by itself...

Using the economic freedom index and the newly developed KOF-index of globalization, it is shown that the Scandinavian welfare states have experienced faster, bigger and more consistent increases in these areas, compared to the smaller European and the so called liberal welfare states. The...

My main purpose is to connect the issue of property rights to the set of questions concerning economic growth and the long-term determinants of the improvements in material well-being. To anticipate what will be my main conclusion, it is that property rights and economic growth are not...

This paper presents an analysis of agricultural contracts using a transaction costs approach. We contend that in a context of modern agriculture, with well defined property rights, agricultural contracts must balance costs and benefits, aligning tenant and landlord incentives towards a similar...

This paper aim to analyze the role that such a concepts like family, inheritance and property played for developing modern Argentine society. Especially how some principles were broken on, while others have been kept on, as the different legal criteria suggests. Rural Law of 1865, Civil Law of...

The modern state has monopolized the legitimate use of force. This concept is twofold. First, the state is empowered with enforcement rights; second, the rights of the individuals are (partly) restricted. In a simple model of property rights with appropriation and defense activity, we show that...

Land can be inefficiently allocated when attempts to assemble separately-owned pieces of land into large parcels are frustrated by holdout landowners. The existing land-assembly institution of eminent domain can be used neither to gauge efficiency nor to determine how to compensate displaced...