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...

This Article offers a theory of secured credit that aims to answer fundamental questions that have long percolated in the bankruptcy and secured transactions literatures. Are security interests property rights, contract rights, or something else? Why do secured creditors enjoy a priority right...

The technology behind ridesharing enterprises is evolving at lightning pace, and because of that, the legal issues which arise when trying to fit these sharing enterprises into existing regulatory regimes can result in decisions that draw competing philosophies into focus. Police power hawks...

This article examines a recent decision of the South Australian Supreme Court, Westpac Banking Corporation v Chamberlain, which addressed the issue of the potential for a native title to raise an arguable defence to a mortgagee's application for an order for possession in a case of default

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...

The disjuncture between public and customary law regulating property rights is a problem for capital formation and poverty alleviation across Africa. In Kenya, government efforts to establish clearly defined property rights and adjudication mechanisms have been plagued by the existence of...

User rights in fisheries refer to the rights of fishers to harvest from fish resources. In terms of exclusivity, security, duration and transferability these rights can be strong or they can be weak. For this a definition of and a measure of the strength of user rights is needed. We refer to...

This essay examines the relationship between property rights and environmental protection. According to the 'tragedy of the commons' model, environmental pollution and resource depletion result from the inadequate specification of property rights on environmental goods. Two solutions are...