Garrett Hardin's “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, 1968) is widely influential but fundamentally incorrect. Hardin characterizes the commons problem as arising from the exercise of free will in a world with limited carrying capacity. Hardin's solutions to this problem emphasize coercive...

There is a large body of research in economics and law suggesting that the legal origins of a country—that is, whether its legal regime is based on English common law or French, German, or Nordic civil law—profoundly impacts a range of outcomes. However, the exact relationship between legal...

Earlier this year I visited Dharavi in Mumbai, Asia's largest urban slum1. Pervasive economic and social disadvantage are endemic to any slum, a fact which leads inexorably to wider societal instability, representing a serious political challenge to those states in which they emerge. The...

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...

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...

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...

The careful distinction between property and sovereignty is a central part of legal thought from the early modern period onwards. But the reality shows that this division is socioeconomically not that clear. Property rights are rights against persons in relation to things, but effectively they...

Property disputes between de facto partners have been the focus of much attention in England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In this paper, the author compares the approaches adopted in each of these countries for dealing with such disputes. The author concludes that English courts have...

This article explains the concepts applying to property transfer on death under the New Zealand Property (Relationships) Act 1976. The authors discuss the relevant provisions of the Act, along with the tensions underlying the Act, such as that between the desire of executors and administrators...