We show that efficient exchange obtains independently of the degree to which a legal system protects the rights of owners. We study a number of different legal rules, including property rules (strong protection), liability rules (any party can take the owner's asset but must pay a...

The protection of property, historically and practically is crucial in many aspects. The laws of democratic countries, as well as the international agreements put importance on such regulations. One of the common types of restriction to the right of a peaceful enjoyment of property comes from...

This paper proposes two hypotheses on the publicity requirement and the limitations of possession to provide information for legal titling. It then tests these hypotheses by examining how legal systems deal with possession in movable and immovable property, and comparing actual and documentary...

In this book chapter, we argue that the distinction between "structure" and "style" is important in understanding the similarities and dissimilarities in common and civil law property. Structure is the functional form the law employs to protect people's use interests, whereas style is a manner...

Property rights are often referred to as “evolving,” but the term is usually used to signify a gradual process of change rather than one based on Darwinian evolutionary theory. Because property rights go through processes of variation, selection and replication, a more rigorously...

We develop an evolutionary game model to reveal the theoretical basis for the assignment of property right, where both plaintiff and defendant argue for their rights by claiming their reliance investment. We allow for the possibility that the value of the total product depend not only on the...

The most notable, or at least the most noted, form of property evolution has been the transfer of exclusive rights from collectives to individuals and vice versa, such as the farm collectivization in Soviet Union and the establishment of the People's Communes in Mao's China and their reversals....

Nineteenth century treaties promised Pacific Northwest Indian tribes the right of taking fish in common with the citizens... The meaning of those ten words has produced numerous court decsions in the ensuing century-and-a-half, including a half-dozen from the U.S. Supreme Court. This article...

Sub-Saharan Africa has received tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid over the last fifty years yet economic development has remained elusive. In many countries absolute poverty has increased and life expectancy has declined. Karol Boudreaux and Paul Aligica argue that the results of...

In a full-information, zero transactions costs world, the degree of protection afforded to an entitlement does not affect the likelihood of efficient trade. In reality, imperfect information is often inevitable. Specifically, a party will usually have incomplete information about fairness norms...