The Rise of Inclusive Political Institutions and Stronger Property Rights: Time Inconsistency Vs. Opacity.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmine Guerriero ◽  
Giacomo Benati ◽  
Federico Zaina
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Time Inconsistency

The Economic Case for an International Law of the Atmosphere

1991 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
B P Herber
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
Pareto Efficiency ◽  
Demand And Supply ◽  
Analytical Foundation ◽  
International Body ◽  
The Subject

In this paper economic theory is applied to the global atmospheric problems of greenhouse warming and ozone-layer depletion. Previous work by economists on the subject of environmental pollution has largely ignored the global dimension of the problem such as characterizes the greenhouse and ozone issues, thus resulting in the absence of an appropriate property rights basis for implementing economically efficient atmospheric utilization policies. The present analysis is an attempt to fill this void and, in so doing, to construct an economic basis for global atmospheric policies. Its analytical foundation will utilize such economic concepts as public goods and bads, externalities, common property resources, and Pareto-efficiency. The study will interact with the disciplines of international law and political science because of the relevance of political institutions and property rights to the analysis. The nature of the economic demand and supply for a clean global atmosphere is examined in section 1 and in section 2 the problems inherent in international collective consumption such as occurs in the utilization of the global atmosphere are considered. In section 3 the economist's Pareto-efficiency rule is applied as a basis for international agreements in pursuit of efficient atmospheric use and in section 4 global atmospheric policy options are considered within the parameters of contemporary international social choice institutions. The creation of a sovereign international body to implement an international law of the atmosphere that is founded upon the legal premise of global property rights to the atmosphere is recommended.

scholarly journals Endogenous Institutional Change and Dynamic Capitalism

2010 ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Victor Nee ◽  
Sonja Opper
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
Property Rights Protection ◽  
The Government ◽  
Formal Rules

State-centered theory asserts that political institutions and credible commitment by political elite to formal rules securing property rights provides the necessary and sufficient conditions for economic growth to take place. In this approach, the evolution of institutions favorable to economic performance is a top-down process led by politicians who control the state. Hence, in less developed and poor countries, the counterfactual is that if formal institutions secure property rights and check predatory action by the political elite, then sustained economic growth would follow. The limitation of state-centered theory stems from the problem that behavioral prescriptions - formal rules and regulations - that reflect what politicians prefer can be ignored. In contrast, we lay out the bottomup construction of economic institutions that gave rise to capitalist economic development in China. Entrepreneurship in the economically developed regions of the coastal provinces was not fueled by exogenous institutional changes. When the first entrepreneurs decided to decouple from the traditional socialist production system, the government had neither initiated financial reforms inviting a broader societal participation, nor had it provided property rights protection or transparent rules specifying company registration and liabilities. Instead, it was the development and use of innovative informal arrangements within close-knit groups of like-minded actors that provided the necessary funding and reliable business norms. This allowed the first wave of entrepreneurs to survive outside of the state-owned manufacturing system. This bottom-up process resembles earlier accounts of the rise of capitalism in the West.

scholarly journals On the impossibility of central bank independence: four decades of time- (and intellectual) inconsistency

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A Hartwell
Keyword(s):  
Central Bank ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Institutional Analysis ◽  
Financial System ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Central Banking ◽  
Central Bank Independence ◽  
Time Inconsistency ◽  
Fortieth Anniversary

Abstract The intellectual justification for modern central banking, time-inconsistency, celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2017 alongside the Cambridge Journal of Economics. However, the key progeny of the time-inconsistency literature, central bank independence, has fundamental flaws that have been thus far neglected in mainstream research. In the first instance, the argument for independence relies on a utilitarian rather than institutional analysis, one that neglects the genesis of central banks and their relation to other institutions within a country. Second, central bank independence neglects the complex interdependencies of the global monetary and financial system. Applying an institutional lens to the concept of central bank independence, I conclude that ‘independence’ fails under the reality of globalization as much as it does in a domestic context. With central banks reliant on all manner of political institutions, they are never really independent operationally or in terms of policy.

scholarly journals Determinants of property rights in Poland and Ukraine: the polity or politicians?

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER A. HARTWELL
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Economic Calculation ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Face

AbstractNorth (1994) famously remarked that ‘it is the polity that defines and enforces property rights’. This paper traces the development of property rights in Poland and Ukraine and explores their divergence over the past three centuries using North's framework of economic calculation. In each country, the distribution of political power and political institutions had a profound impact on property rights. Indeed, while it was the Polishpolitythat defined the evolution of property rights from 1386 to 1795 and then from 1989 onward, due to diffusion of power, it was Ukrainianpoliticiansthat controlled the destiny of property rights for most of Ukraine's history. This situation has not changed despite the Maidan revolution in Ukraine, and recent moves in Poland show how tenuous property rights are in the face of political opposition.

Autocratic Legislatures and Expropriation Risk

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Charles Wilson ◽  
Joseph Wright
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Expropriation Risk ◽  
Authoritarian Institutions ◽  
International Investors ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

An important question for international investors concerns the relationship between political institutions and property rights. Yet a debate remains over whether authoritarian institutions promote favorable investment climates. Using data on oil nationalization in a sample of autocracies, this study finds that legislatures are correlated with lower expropriation risk in non-personalist dictatorships, but a higher risk of nationalization in personalist regimes. The results show a consistent pattern between authoritarian institutions and property protections, for which context matters.

The Politics of Property Rights

1995 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 867-881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Firmin-Sellers
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
Customary Land

The study of land tenure polarizes the field of development. Neoclassical scholars lobby for a move toward private property rights, while other economists and historians defend the maintenance of customary land tenure. I argue that the development scholars' focus on the structure of property rights obscures a more fundamental problem of land reform—that of enforcement. Property rights will not inspire individual investment and economic growth unless political institutions give the ruler of a local community or nation-state sufficient coercive authority to silence those who advocate an alternative, more distributionally favorable property rights system. At the same time, political institutions must force the ruler to establish a credible commitment to that property rights system. I illustrate this theoretical argument through an analysis of property rights institutions in Akyem Abuakwa, a traditional state in colonial Ghana.

Even Constrained Governments Take

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (8) ◽  
pp. 1784-1813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. T. Graham ◽  
Noel P. Johnston ◽  
Allison F. Kingsley
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Veto Player ◽  
Risk Transfer ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Expropriation Risk

This article analyzes an understudied and contested form of government taking, transfer restriction, which has supplanted expropriation as the most ubiquitous and costly type of international property rights violation. Veto-player-type constraints curtail governments’ ability to engage in outright and (nontransfer related) creeping expropriation but have little impact on their ability to generate wealth via transfer restrictions. We use a formal model to derive testable implications regarding the effect of political institutions and domestic politics on governments’ ability to collect these two types of rent. Empirically, we use novel time-series cross-sectional data to show that while veto-player-type political constraints diminish expropriation risk, transfer risk is much less affected: even constrained governments impose transfer restrictions.

Measuring institutions

2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farayi Gwenhamo ◽  
Johannes W Fedderke ◽  
Raphael de Kadt
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Economic Outcomes ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Time Series Studies ◽  
Country Specific

This article presents a new dataset of indicators of political freedom, property rights and political instability for Zimbabwe for the period 1946 to 2005. The dataset is constructed by systematically coding the three concepts of political freedom, property rights and political instability along a multitude of dimensions. The lengthy time coverage of the dataset allows country-specific econometric analysis to evaluate generalizing propositions about the effects of political institutions on economic outcomes. The dataset also contributes to the dynamic analysis of the effects of political institutions on conflict, a contentious issue in political science. Correlations between the new measures reveal that while political instability has a strong and negative relationship with property rights, it has no significant relationship with political freedom. The finding supports the notion that political conflict is significantly higher in the in-between category of semi-democracy than at either end of the democracy scale. The validity of the dataset is supported by its strong correlations with other conceptually and operationally different measures of political institutions. The new dataset has begun to be employed in country-specific time-series studies of the link between institutions and economic outcomes. Two core results are that property rights influence the volumes of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Zimbabwe and that negative spillover effects of poor institutional environments can occur between neighbouring countries. It is feasible to extend the geographical coverage of the dataset by applying our methodological framework to other countries.

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