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| 1 |
ID:
110803
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the effect of climate change on a type of armed conflict that pits pastoralists (cattle herders) against each other (range wars). Such conflicts are typically fought over water rights and/or grazing rights to unfenced/unowned land. The state is rarely involved directly. The rangeland of East Africa is a region particularly vulnerable to drought and livestock diseases associated with climate change. To analyze the possible effects of climate change on pastoral conflict, we focus our analysis on changes in resource availability, contrasting cases of abundance and scarcity. The role of resources is further contextualized by competing notions of property rights, and the role of the state in defining property and associated rights. We employ a contest success function (CSF) game-theoretic model to analyze the logic of range wars. This CSF approach emphasizes the low-level, non-binary nature of raiding behavior between pastoralist groups over limited natural resources. A central contribution of this approach is that the logic of raiding behavior implies a positive relationship between resources and conflict. This positive relationship is supported by several studies of the rangeland of East Africa, but is generally dismissed by the literature on the 'resource curse'. This relationship is contingent on other factors examined in the model, producing the following results. First, the level of property rights protection provided by the state generally reduces conflict between pastoralist groups. Second, if property rights protection is provided in a biased manner, then conflict between pastoralist groups increases. Third, severe resource asymmetries between two pastoralist groups will induce the poorer group to become bandits (focusing their efforts on raiding and not producing), while the richer group raids in retaliation.
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| 2 |
ID:
160787
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| Summary/Abstract |
Collaboration between two groups that may invest their resources in a common productive activity has the potential to lead to conflict over the output of that activity. This article examines the stakes of such conflict as well as the willingness for parties to subject themselves to a third-party arbiter. The model highlights three determinants of conflict and of investment in credibility-enhancing institutions: the value of the output, the relative endowments of the parties, and the mutual benefits of collaboration. In particular, the analysis shows that complementarity between the groups’ resources lowers the stakes of political conflict and increases the incentives to commit. The model thus suggests a new mechanism through which we can understand the frequency of conflict and the poor institutions associated in countries with mineral resources. The model’s predictions also help us to understand how Mauritius avoided the resource curse and was able to develop sustainable economic growth.
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| 3 |
ID:
023185
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| Publication |
July 2002.
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| Description |
437-461
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| 4 |
ID:
146157
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| Summary/Abstract |
We often presume that international financial actors have the same preferences, but this paper asks whether the property rights of foreign direct investors matter to sovereign bondholders. When governments expropriate direct investors, different investors' preferences could align over property rights issues. However, bondholders likely take positive signals if expropriation generates revenue for the state. Using a novel data set (1995–2011), I find that governments that earn revenue from expropriation can enjoy lower long-term spreads on sovereign bonds. Although governments that expropriate lose out on FDI, they can benefit by generating revenue and enjoying rewards in sovereign debt markets. Unpacking investor preferences thus reveals gaps in market-based informal property rights enforcement. When bondholders' and direct investors' preferences conflict, governments gain space to prioritize other goals over the protection of private property.
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| 5 |
ID:
154434
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper addresses the question of whether the way bribery is practiced in China is such that corruption might be compatible with rapid economic growth during the boom years between 2000 and 2007. In particular, it examines whether bribery based on diffuse reciprocity transforms a corrupt relationship from one based on short-term egoistic gains (looting) to one based on long-term gains (profit maximizing), with the assumption that such a form of bribery will lead the parties to maximize total gains and hence will encourage long-term growth rather than short-term predatory looting. More broadly, the paper inquires whether a regime of informal property rights based on bribery and diffuse reciprocity might compensate for the shortcomings of an imperfectly constructed and incomplete set of formal property rights such as has emerged in post-Mao China and thereby improve the prospects for economic growth. The paper concludes that while bribery based on diffuse reciprocity may encourage the parties directly involved in such corrupt exchanges to maximize their total long-term gains, so long as bribery remains a private good and an informal property rights regime based on bribery remains subject to abrupt and catastrophic revision due to its illegal nature, “bribery with Chinese characteristics” cannot be characterized as growth enhancing and thus cannot be a major explanation for why the Chinese economy grew rapidly during the “third boom.”
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| 6 |
ID:
068330
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| 7 |
ID:
156608
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Through two rounds of land contracting, rural households have been allocated a bundle of rights in land. We observe significant differences across villages in the amount of land to which villagers retain a claim and the institutional mechanisms governing the exchange of land rights. This study reveals the perpetuation and expansion of non-market mechanisms accruing to the benefit of village cadres and state officials and only limited emergence of market mechanisms in which households are primary beneficiaries. It identifies factors in economic, political and legal domains that incentivize and enable state officials and local cadres to capture returns from use of land. Relatedly, the study finds differences in conflict over property-rights regimes. Drawing on a pilot survey carried out by the authors in November of 2011 in Shaanxi and Jiangsu provinces (192 households in 24 villages), this paper seeks to explain heterogeneity and change in property-rights regimes over time and across space.
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| 8 |
ID:
188604
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| Publication |
Hyderabad, Orient BlackSwan Pvt Ltd, 2010.
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| Description |
viii, 318p.pbk
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| Contents |
Note: Essays from Economic and Political Weekly
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| Standard Number |
9788125039532
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Copies: C:1/I:0,R:0,Q:0
Circulation
| Accession# | Call# | Current Location | Status | Policy | Location |
| 060285 | 320.12/EPW 060285 | Main | On Shelf | General | |
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| 9 |
ID:
107044
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Gambetta's theoretical framework focuses on two important aspects directly relating to the birth and development of mafias, namely a demand for private protection and a supply of the same. In the Post-Mao era, China started its transition from a centrally controlled economy to a market-directed economy by adopting reform and opening-up policies. The widespread creation of property rights has exponentially enlarged the demand for protection. However, property rights are ambiguously defined in the Chinese legal system, and the state is unable and unwilling to provide efficient and sufficient law enforcement mechanisms for needy people because of the rampant corruption of government officials and the weak judicial system. In this case, the mafia that is interested in the private provision of protection developed into an alternative enforcement mechanism for 'securing' property rights in China's economic transition. The most important service offered by the mafia in China is not only to assist business enterprises in monopolising the market, but also to assist local government in China's economic reform.
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| 10 |
ID:
152308
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This article compares four historical periods in Afghanistan to better understand whether land reform in the post-2001 context will improve prospects for political order. Its central finding is that political order can be established without land reform provided that the state is able to establish and maintain coercive capacity. However, the cost of establishing political order mainly through coercion is very low levels of economic development. We also find that when land reform was implemented in periods of weak or declining coercive capacity, political disorder resulted from grievances unrelated to land issues. In addition, land reforms implemented in the context of highly centralized political institutions increased property insecurity. This suggests the importance of investing in coercive capacity alongside land reform in the current context but also that establishing inclusive political institutions prior to land reform will increase its chances of success.
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| 11 |
ID:
133702
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The impact of armed conflict may persist long after the end of war, and may include a lasting institutional legacy. We use a novel dataset from rural Burundi to examine the impact of local exposure to conflict on institutional quality, and try to 'unbundle' institutions by distinguishing between three dimensions of the institutional framework: property rights security, local political institutions, and social capital. We find that conflict exposure affects institutional quality, and document that the impact of conflict on institutional quality may be positive or negative, depending on the institutional measure. Specifically, exposure to violence strengthens in-group social capital and promotes tenure security. However, the appreciation for state institutions is negatively affected by exposure to violence. We find no evidence consistent with design-based theories of institutional quality, or the idea that institutional quality is enhanced by interventions of (non)state external actors. Instead our findings provide some support for the theory of parochial altruism. Our results emphasize the importance for policymakers to consider autonomous responses to conflict when designing development programs. They further imply some caution for actors seeking to reform local institutions through top-down interventions.
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| 12 |
ID:
120205
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Violent conflict tends to be costly overall, but can, under some conditions, yield net gains for the initiators of violence, thus creating incentives for coercion. This article explores the economic incentives for coercion across three different arenas and types of conflict: international conflict among states, organized political violence within the state, and relatively unorganized domestic conflicts over property rights. Although these conflicts are normally studied in separate scholarly traditions (respectively, international relations, domestic security studies and political economy), drawing from these different traditions can help explain the comparative incidence of coercive force in different conflict arenas by identifying conditions that create incentives for violence. Using cases from Southeast Asia, the article offers an explanation for the empirical pattern of violence in the region being more prevalent currently at the domestic, rather than the international, level and most pervasive in apparently low-level and unorganized forms. At least in part, this pattern is a consequence of the relative stability and consistent protection of what may be thought of as international property rights claims, compared with the greater uncertainty and inconsistency in the enforcement of domestic rights claims. While intuitively paradoxical when viewed through Westphalian lenses, which assume international anarchy and domestic hierarchy, greater contention over domestic rights claims is consistent with the relative asymmetries in coercive capabilities and institutions for dealing with rights claims at the domestic level, compared with the international arena.
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| 13 |
ID:
091174
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| 14 |
ID:
122460
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The purpose of this article is to examine the relationships between real estate market factors (transaction costs, landlord and tenant practices and property rights) and foreign real estate investments (FREI) after controlling for other relevant determinants of FREI. This article uses related observations from 38 countries to investigate the relationships between real estate market factors and FREI. Our analysis shows that countries with lower transaction costs and higher level of property rights attract greater amounts of FREI. Furthermore, our empirical results indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between pro-landlord practices and FREI.
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| 15 |
ID:
119708
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| 16 |
ID:
114190
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Much scholarship in the political economy literature has investigated the influence of the democratic advantage on sovereign bond ratings by credit rating agencies (CRAs). Missing from earlier work, however, is inquiry into the effects on bond ratings of factors that lower political risk, such as adherence to the rule of law, the presence of a strong and independent judicial system, and protection of property rights. Using panel data for up to thirty-six developing countries from 1996 to 2006, we find that rule of law, strong and independent courts, and protection of property rights have significant positive effects on bond ratings. Policymakers wanting to obtain higher bond ratings and increased revenue from bond sales would do well to heed the message contained in these findings.
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| 17 |
ID:
086666
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article addresses property rights in China under four headings. I begin by placing the Chinese case within the larger context of property rights literature. The second section reviews the existing scholarship on property rights in China and identifies existing lacunae. The third section provides the broad contours of the contemporary Chinese intellectual and political discourse over property rights in China. And finally, I offer several cases of property rights that illustrate the variation in the scope of the concept of property rights in China and suggest possible avenues for future research.
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| 18 |
ID:
146054
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Political decentralization is often argued to strengthen political accountability by bringing government closer to the people. Social and civic institutions at the local level, such as lineage associations, temples, churches, or social clubs, can make it easier for citizens to monitor officials and hold them accountable. This article argues that strong social institutions also empower local elites who may use their informal influence to control their group and capture rents. Drawing on evidence from case studies of Chinese villages, the article shows that lineage group leaders who become village officials use their combination of social and political authority to confiscate villagers’ land. Evidence from a survey experiment suggests that endorsement of a land confiscation plan by lineage elites elicits greater compliance with property seizures. A national survey indicates that when a lineage leader becomes a village cadre, it is associated with a 14 to 20 percent increase in the likelihood of a land expropriation. The findings demonstrate how informal institutions and local civil society can be tools of top-down political control.
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| 19 |
ID:
131502
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Dispute resolution institutions facilitate agreements and preserve the peace whenever property rights are imperfect. In weak states, strengthening formal institutions can take decades, and so state and aid interventions also try to shape informal practices and norms governing disputes. Their goal is to improve bargaining and commitment, thus limiting disputes and violence. Mass education campaigns that promote alternative dispute resolution (ADR) are common examples of these interventions. We studied the short-term impacts of one such campaign in Liberia, where property disputes are endemic. Residents of 86 of 246 towns randomly received training in ADR practices and norms; this training reached 15% of adults. One year later, treated towns had higher resolution of land disputes and lower violence. Impacts spilled over to untrained residents. We also saw unintended consequences: more extrajudicial punishment and (weakly) more nonviolent disagreements. Results imply that mass education can change high-stakes behaviors, and improving informal bargaining and enforcement behavior can promote order in weak states.
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| 20 |
ID:
122361
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The human rights debates, which have been high in the past two decades, have proven futile. They increasingly make it clear that it is impossible to change attitudes that are enrooted in centuries-old specific cultural, religious, and other underpinnings.
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