The Emergence of Strong Property Rights: Speculation from history

Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales

No 9478, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

JEL-codes: D23 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-res
Note: CF
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9478.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9478

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9478

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().