Are There Such Things as International Property Rights?

This paper argues that the process of economic globalisation is to remain partial, because of its continued reliance upon the national institutions in charge of the definition and enforcement of private property rights. Emerging economies often face critical enforcement problems, but the experience of the European Single Market also suggests that, in this respect, institutional convergence remains extremely slow. Second, the globalisation process since 1990 has seen a sharp growth in private inter‐temporal contracts, exemplified by private financial transactions and by contracting on intellectual property rights; both are much more vulnerable to local institutional failures than trade in tangible goods and sovereign credits, which were the hallmark of previous phases of international liberalisation. Thus the ‘frontier’ of globalisation now makes markets more exposed to the underlying fragmentation of national property institution than before. This suggests that multilateral negotiation, as an instrument for the coordination of State institutions, will remain the backbone of international economic integration.