IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecopol/v27y2015i3p404-432.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Educated Bandits: Endogenous Property Rights and Intra-Elite Distribution of Human Capital

Author

Listed:
  • Biniam E. Bedasso

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="ecpo12063-abs-0001"> This article presents a simple model of endogenous institutions linking property rights to the distribution of human capital between political and economic elite groups. In the absence of institutional constraints, the commitment problem of the political elites is intensified, because their human capital can turn out to be a double-edged sword raising their efficiency in predation as well as in production. In general, the more human capital the political elites have, the stronger the institutional concessions they are ready to offer to attarct investment. Provided that predation depends sufficiently on human capital, the political elites can credibly commit to respect property rights by specializing in fields that are relevant for the priavte sector. Brain drain can undermine the transition to stable property rights even when the political elites are well-educated. Comparative narratives from Malaysia and Zimbabwe are presented to motivate the theoretical discussion.

Suggested Citation

  • Biniam E. Bedasso, 2015. "Educated Bandits: Endogenous Property Rights and Intra-Elite Distribution of Human Capital," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 404-432, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:27:y:2015:i:3:p:404-432
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecpo.2015.27.issue-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Biniam E. Bedasso, 2019. "College Major Choice and Neighborhood Effects in a Historically Segregated Society: Evidence from South Africa," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 14(3), pages 472-491, Summer.
    2. Nakabayashi, Masaki, 2019. "From family security to the welfare state: Path dependency of social security on the difference in legal origins," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 280-293.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecopol:v:27:y:2015:i:3:p:404-432. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0954-1985 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.