Bart Taub Rui Zhao () (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Abstract
We explore the relationship between capital accumulation, trade, and the development of property rights. In our analysis, the development of property rights is an endogenous process, driven by capital accumulation. Property rights are defined as institutions that internalize the portion of the return to capital that is otherwise treated as common property. Instituting property rights requires a multilateral agreement among agents to carry out this internalization. It can only be sustained when agents are sufficiently patient, so that the long-run benefits of sustaining agreements outweigh the short-run incentive to defect. In this model, the agents that enters the multilateral agreement are firms, whose patience is determined by the marginal product of capital. As capital grows, the marginal product of capital shrinks, and consequently patience increases. Hence property rights can be established only when capital is sufficiently abundant. Suppose there is a capital poor country, which we will label the domestic ($D$) economy, and a capital rich economy, which we label the foreign ($F$) economy. Each country has a property rights regime in place. Our focus will be on the situation in which the capital rich country has grown sufficiently so that there is enough patience to support strong property rights. At the same time, the poor country has not attained strong property rights. Our central question is the following: would the two countries consider opening to trade? If so, how would trade affect the property rights and growth in both countries?
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2006 Meeting Papers with number
843.
Length: Date of creation: 03 Dec 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:red:sed006:843
Contact details of provider: Postal: Society for Economic Dynamics Anne Stubing CV Starr Center for Applied Economics 269 Mercer Street, Room 303 New York University New York, NY 10003 Fax: 1-860-486-4463 Email: Web page: http://www.EconomicDynamics.org/society.htm More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christian Zimmermann).
Find related papers by JEL classification: P14 - Economic Systems - - Capitalist Systems - - - Property Rights O11 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: