IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9478.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Emergence of Strong Property Rights: Speculation from history

Author

Listed:
  • Raghuram Rajan
  • Luigi Zingales

Abstract

How did citizens acquire rights protecting their property from the depredations of the government? In this paper, we argue that one important factor strengthening respect for property is how it is distributed. When there is some specificity associated with property, and property is held by those who are most productive, the distribution of property becomes relatively easy to defend. By contrast, when property is owned by those who get rents simply by virtue of ownership, the distribution of property becomes much harder to defend. We speculate on why some countries have been able to develop a climate of respect for property rights while others have not.

Suggested Citation

  • Raghuram Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 2003. "The Emergence of Strong Property Rights: Speculation from history," NBER Working Papers 9478, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9478
    Note: CF
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9478.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Zhipeng & Zhang, Mei & Ageli, Mohammed Moosa, 2022. "Revisiting resource curse hypothesis and sustainable development: Evaluating the role of financial risk for USA," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    2. Enrico C. Perotti & Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden, 2006. "The Political Economy of Corporate Control and Labor Rents," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(1), pages 145-174, February.
    3. Daniel Tut, 2022. "Debt dynamic, debt dispersion and corporate governance," International Journal of Managerial Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 19(4), pages 744-771, July.
    4. Adèle Feulefack Tsangué, 2023. "Banking Market Structure in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Institutions," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 7(7), pages 406-429, July.
    5. Besley, Timothy & Ghatak, Maitreesh, 2010. "Property Rights and Economic Development," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4525-4595, Elsevier.
    6. Thomas Gall & Paolo Masella, 2007. "A Tale of Markets and Jungles in a Simple Model of Growth," JEPS Working Papers 07-004, JEPS.
    7. Mr. Marc G Quintyn & Ms. Genevieve Verdier, 2010. "Mother, Can I Trust the Government? Sustained Financial Deepening: A Political Institutionsview," IMF Working Papers 2010/210, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Roe, Mark J. & Siegel, Jordan I., 2011. "Political instability: Effects on financial development, roots in the severity of economic inequality," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 279-309, September.
    9. Tanja Kosi & Štefan Bojnec, 2013. "Institutional barriers to business entry in advanced economies," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 317-329, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:9478. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.