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...

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...

I investigate how the first large-scale randomized-controlled trial of a land formalization reform in rural Western Africa affects villagers' cooperativeness and trust. With the reform, land plots traditionally characterized by collective property and informal possession are mapped, parcels...

This article analyzes rights consciousness as distinct from legal consciousness, and uses the post-1989 housing restitution in Romania to study property rights consciousness as a type of rights consciousness. I argue that property rights consciousness is only partially an outcome of state power...

This paper finds that the existence of strong kinship networks tends to limit state interference with private property use in rural China by protecting villagers against unwanted government land takings. It then distinguishes kinship networks from other kinds of social networks by showing that...

Over the century-long period from just before the American Revolution until the end of the Civil War the United States underwent a profound transformation, beginning with its political break from Britain and expanding rapidly to embrace political and economic liberalism and elements of equality...