The structure of rights in the context of private property

Some rights to resources adhere to individuals on the basis of ascribed characteristics—these are rights of person. These rights are not subject to voluntary alienation. And there are rights that adhere to specific characteristics of resources and are subject to alienation. These are rights in property. However, there has been a systematic tendency to promote property rights at the expense of the rights of person and, in so doing, confound the analysis of the commons, of common property, and of private property. Given a delineation of fundamental concepts, this paper examines critically the foundational works of Demsetz and Coase and shows that their theoretical arguments depend on an implicit denial of all rights of person. It is shown, however, that rights of person are not properly analyzable by the standards that apply to rights in property and that the optimal policy to pursue in contemporary society is to determine a desired configuration rights and responsibilities in combination with rights in property.     

Social stratification in transitional economies: property rights and the structure of markets

In transitions from state socialism, property rights are re-allocated to organizations and groups, creating new markets and new forms of economic enterprise that reshape the stratification order. A generation of research has estimated individual-level outcomes with income equations and mobility models, relying on broad assumptions about economic change. We redirect attention to the process of economic change that structures emerging markets. The process varies across market sectors, depending on the entity that is granted rights formerly exercised by state organs, and on the combination of rights they are granted. The transformation of three sectors in China—agriculture, steel manufacturing, and real estate—shows how different allocations of property rights alter the stratification order in strikingly different ways. Historical analysis of the evolution of markets and enterprises integrates insights from economic sociology into research on social stratification, providing a structural perspective on transitions from state socialism.     

Institutions and the adoption of rights: political and property rights in Colombia

Citizenship rights are the result of specific political bargains between different collective actors and state authorities (Tilly Theory and Society 26(34):599–602, 1997). The political bargains for rights are encoded in institutions, and these institutions develop independently from each other and take organizational characteristics that make certain rights easier to adopt than others. I argue that these institutions vary along two dimensions that affect the extent to which states can adopt rights successfully: one dimension is distributional and the second is the depth or extension of the rules that frame a given right. This article focuses on the institutional differences between property rights, especially land property, and political rights, and on the consequences of those differences on their adoption. I then illustrate my argument with examples from Colombia since 1980.     

Incomplete property rights and overinvestment

I consider a model in which an asset owner must decide how much to invest in his asset mindful of the fact that an encroacher??s valuation of the asset is increasing in the asset owner??s investment. Due to incomplete property rights, the encroacher and asset owner engage in a contest over the control of the asset after investment has taken place. A standard result is that the asset owner will underinvest in the asset relative to the first-best level of investment when property rights are complete. Contrary to this standard result, I find that when the interaction between the asset owner and the encroacher is infinitely repeated and the encroacher has some bargaining power over the size of the transfer from the asset owner to him, then there is a cooperative equilibrium in which the asset owner finds it optimal to overinvest in the asset when property rights are incomplete relative to the first-best level of investment when property rights are complete. Overinvestment is used to induce cooperation. However, this result depends on the encroacher??s bargaining power or, more generally, whether the transfer is an increasing function of investment.     

Enforcement of property rights in a barter economy

If property rights to consumption goods are insecure, the incentives to trade in a barter economy are reshaped. In a pure exchange economy, we examine the case where two contestable consumption goods are vital to two agents and initial endowments follow a binary distribution. In line with the existing literature, we examine in a two-stage game how the equilibrium security of claims to property is determined. We find that, depending on the exogenous preference and appropriation-effectiveness parameters, two different regimes emerge in equilibrium: trade and appropriation, and peaceful coexistence, with the latter regime exhibiting efficiency with respect to the goods traded. However, inefficiencies arise due to the investment in defensive activities necessary to deter appropriation. Thus, we have found an endogenously determined measure for the transaction cost underlying a market which replicates the outcome of a Walrasian market.     

On the social stability of coalitional property rights regimes

We present a model of coalitional property rights (CPR) regimes– regimes in which ownership of a good is attributable to coalitions of various sizes. Specifically, for each good, we define a legal structure that specifies the legal coalitions of individuals that share a communal claim to that good. Generally, each legal coalition may use exclusionary rules to allocate its holdings internally. These rules allow eligible subcoalitions to recontract by expropriating some fraction of the legal coalition's endowment. We then ask: what types of CPR regimes are socially stable in the sense of having a nonempty core? We give conditions on the legal structure and the primitives of the economy that achieve social stability in this sense. We emphasize two cases of particular interest. ( I ) Unanimity. Unanimity is required for a legal coalition to recontract against (block) the status quo. In this case, the core is nonempty under standard assumptions. Each agent's ability to veto an alternative allocation allows a partial characterization in terms of the economies that are privatized by dividing up the communal endowment among the members of each legal coalition. We show that in some economies' collective vs private ownership matters in terms of social stability. ( II ) Exclusion. Many eligible subcoalitions can expropriate the legal coalition's entire endowment. An example is the collection of simple majorities. The presence of cycles can easily lead to social instability. We show that if endowment holdings are sufficiently “specialized” and each agent's “veto power” sufficiently large, then stability can be achieved despite the presence of cycles in some goods. Received: 30 June 1993/Accepted: 28 February 1998     

城市住宅小区业主维权的现状、困境与对策

一、业主维权的背景 从20世纪80年代开始．货币分房政策逐渐取代了我国长期实行的福利分房政策：同时．为解决城市住宅小区中房产的日常管理和维护．深圳首先引进了西方国家普遍实行的物业管理模式．试图通过专业的物业服务企业以市场化运作的方式对小区的物业进行统一的维护和管理。     

Incomplete property rights, redistribution, and welfare

In a world where the private protection of property is costly, government redistribution can lead to an increase in aggregate output. This result is not new. The novelty of this paper lies in specifying the conditions under which this efficiency-enhancing redistribution improves everyone’s welfare including the welfare of those whose labor finances the redistributive program (i.e., the rich) and how this is affected by the protection of property rights. The state may directly enhance economic rights through investments in security and the protection of property or it may indirectly do so through the redistribution of income. Under certain conditions, redistribution becomes desirable in situations where the state has exhausted its ability to enhance efficiency through the direct enforcement of property rights. In this case, redistribution can make all members of a society better off. Specifically, this occurs when the cost of predation is sufficiently low and the technology of private protection of property rights is sufficiently weak. The adverse effects of redistribution may be the consequence but not the cause of state failure. The real cause is a corrupt and inept state. My thanks are due to an anonymous referee and Zane Spindler for very helpful and critical comments. I thank SSHRC for financial support     

我国农村土地产权制度改革的几点思考

城市化是我国低成本实现现代化的必由之路。城市化提高社会要素整体配置效率,没有城市化依托的工业化将支付极高的分散化成本;一个社会从事农业的劳动力越多,物质财富的代际积累能力越弱,一个大多数人生活在农村的大国要实现现代化是不可想象的,解决“三农”问题的主导权在城市而不是在农村;     

Agency costs,property rights,and the evolution of labor unions

Collective bargaining requires that an agent represent workers. This paper examines the implications for the trade union movement of the resulting agency costs. Without transferable rights in the union, union members lack the means and incentive to bring forth the innovative agent controls common to the modern corporation. Considerations of the bargaining strengths of employers and employees, each represented by an agent, provide an explanation of the simultaneous decline of private sector union membership (corporate share holders have been more successful at lowering agency costs) and growth of public sector union representation (where the union official, a “double agent,” serves the interest of both employee and bureaucratic employer). The authors acknowledge the helpful remarks Donald L. Martin whose earlier research on property rights in unions inspired this effort. Don Bellante’s work was supported by a grant from the Research Committee of the College of Business Administration, University of South Florida.     

日本和俄罗斯农地产权制度变革及其对中国的借鉴价值

土地问题在我国具有重要的现实意义.农业和农村经济的发展、乡村城镇化、农村劳动力转移乃至农村小康社会的建设,无不与土地问题密切相关.然而,一段时期以来.在农业结构调整、农业产业规模经营、城市化和工业化等过程中,村组集体随意终止土地承包合同,无偿收回或非法转让、出租农民承包土地,强迫农民以土地入股等干涉农民土地经营自主权的行为时有发生,导致农村土地纠纷呈扩大、蔓延之势,成为影响农村经济发展和社会稳定的突出矛盾.     

An analytical framework for urban upgrading: property rights, property values and physical attributes

In the mid-1980s, the state government of Maharashtra, India, introduced a slum redevelopment strategy in its capital city, Mumbai (Bombay). In contrast to traditional housing improvement strategies that focus primarily on legalizing the land tenure of residents, slum redevelopment is a more complex strategy. It involves the demolition of existing slums and the redevelopment of new, higher density, medium-rise apartment blocks, including, entirely cross-subsidized housing for the original slum dwellers. Mumbai's experience, documented through a single case study in this paper, illustrates that contrary to the conventional focus only on private property rights, upgrading policy must be based on a differentiated view of property rights. Furthermore, policy must also consider the property values, the physical attributes of the real property (underlying asset), and the interplay among property rights, property values and physical attributes. Second, the paper demonstrates that under certain conditions, there is a constituency among slum dwellers for complex initiatives, like redevelopment. This suggests that planners should be skeptical about popular, simplistic myths regarding low-income housing preferences. However, slum redevelopment's slow pace also implies that planners need to be cautious in their enthusiasm for redevelopment.     

Equilibrium and efficiency with property rights and local consumption externalities

There is no mechanism that guarantees existence and Pareto optimality of equilibrium in all situations if each individual has limited property rights and a utility function that depends upon his neighbour's consumption. This is true under virtually any assumption about coalition formation. Therefore, Sen's paradox of the Paretian liberal is confirmed in an economic exchange setting with limited externalitities, and Coase's conjecture on the efficiency of bargaining with complete information is denied.David Austen-Smith, Michael Peters, and Jonathan Riley provided helpful comments at various stages. I am grateful for their suggestions and for the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada). Responsibility for the paper's deficiencies rests with the author, of course.