The results of 2012 clearly pointed to the fact that the classical set of problems specific to the Russian privatization – justification of the fair price for assets to be privatized, real motivation of the participants, determination of the criteria of selection of the buyer, ensuring of...

A central challenge in securing property rights is the subversion of justice through legal skill, bribery, or physical force by the strong — the state or its powerful citizens — against the weak. We present evidence that the less educated and poorer citizens in many countries feel their...

This paper discusses a series of ECJ judgments on national mortgage enforcement proceedings in light of the Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts. According to the Court, national courts must be able to provide interim measures suspending mortgage enforcement proceedings, thereby...

It is easy to get the impression from reading economics that property generally, and property in ideas in particular, is efficient. This impression is meaningful because it suggests that there is no efficiency rationale for government regulation of any kind other than the institution and defense...

Access to landlocked land is a universal legal entanglement, but surprisingly no law and economic scholars have systematically analyzed this issue. The doctrines in the U.S., called “easements of necessity” and “statutory easements,” are similar to those in civil-law jurisdictions, and...

We examine how changes in property rights security impact firm capital structure decisions by exploiting a natural experiment, the enactment of China's Property Rights Law in 2007 (the Law). Using a large dataset of non-listed firms, we document a significant overall decrease in leverage after...

To clarify the determinants and interaction of property rights and transaction costs, I study the design of the legal protection of either a good whose consensual transfer entails a transaction inefficiency or an upstream firm's input whose random cost is unverifiable and ex ante...

We empirically quantify the sensitivity of investments to uncertain property rights by drawing upon the Northern Pacific's massive land grant and the ensuing political and legal battle that generated significant uncertainty to title. To overcome the empirical challenge that property rights and...

To clarify the determinants and interaction of property rights and transaction costs, I study the design of the legal protection of either a good whose consensual transfer entails a transaction inefficiency or an upstream firm's input whose random cost is unverifiable and ex ante...