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The evolution of property right institutions and their consequence on investment decisions are central issues in the political economy of development. Effective and well‐defined property rights are deemed essential in providing the preconditions for economic growth. The importance of property right arrangements stems from the fact that they impact and alter the distribution of income. Economists are, therefore, in agreement that market transactions are more efficient when property rights are enforced. According to North and Thomas (1973), observed variations in economic performance across countries were related to the presence (or absence, for that matter) of property right institutions. Recently, Beseley (1995), and Feder and Feeny (1991), have argued that economic development and well‐established property right institutions are positively correlated. Meanwhile, there are two arguments in the literature in favour of establishing property rights institutions. First, assigning ownership of valuable assets and designating the parties bearing the rewards and costs is expected to strengthen market forces. In particular, the private control over assets and the ability to reap the rewards from exploiting these assets create incentives for investment and production. Second, enforcing contractual agreements is expected to provide economic agents with the incentives to use resources effectively and efficiently. When property rights are poorly defined, contracts become hard to enforce and fraud and corruption go unpunished. Bureaucrats responsible for formulating government policies will use their positions to influence the allocation of resources whereby, business managers find themselves forced to buy favours. The need to pay substantial bribes will, therefore, reduce the entrepreneur's incentives to invest and impose a significant burden on economic growth. Empirical evidence based on cross‐country comparisons does indeed suggest that corruption has large, adverse effects on private investment and economic growth. Mauro (1996) showed that when a country improves its standing on the corruption index, say, from 6 to 8 (0 being the most corrupt, 10 the least) it will experience a 4 percentage point increase in its investment rate and a 0.5 percentage point increase in its annual per capita GDP growth rate. These large effects suggest that policies that establish institutions to curb corruption could have significant payoffs. Political corruption will also undercut the government's ability to raise revenues from issuing licenses and permits, and lead to ever‐higher tax rates being levied on fewer and fewer taxpayers. This, in turn, reduces the government's ability to provide essential public goods, including the rule of law. When institutions are weak, bribes can alter outcomes of the legal and regulatory process by inducing the government either to fail to stop illegal activities (such as drug dealing or pollution) or unduly favour one party over another in court cases or other legal proceedings. Furthermore, theoretical and empirical studies have shown that corruption and political control usually raise transaction costs, uncertainty, and are associated with free‐rider problems. These costs will, therefore, constitute a dead‐weight loss to the society. Unless political and economic reforms are made, these inefficiencies will certainly hamper growth and development.

The purpose of this paper is to attest whether generalized trust variable is the best proxy for social capital in explaining the latter’s effect on economic growth in a panel setting. Via a specially formulated theoretical framework, the authors also test whether the growth-effect of social capital is direct or indirect, and if it is indirect, can property rights be the link between social capital and growth.

The authors begin with testing the robustness of generalized trust variable in explaining the effect of social capital on growth and property rights. The authors then propose a number of trust-alternative variables that are shown to contain an element of trust based on theoretical arguments drawn from previous studies, to proxy for social capital and re-estimate its effect on growth and property rights. In this study, the authors use panel estimation technique, hitherto has been limited in social capital studies, which are capable of reducing omitted variable bias and time-invariant heterogeneity compared to the commonly used cross-sectional estimation.

First, the authors find that generalized trust data obtained by the World Value Survey (WVS) are unable to yield sufficiently robust results in panel estimation due to missing observations problem. Using the proposed trust-alternative variables, the estimation results improve significantly and the authors are able to show that social capital is a deep determinant of growth and it is affecting growth via property rights channel. The findings also give supporting evidence to the primacy of informal rules and constraints as proposed by North (2005) over the political prominence theory by Acemoglu et al. (2005).

Generalized trust data obtained from the WVS, frequently used in majority of social capital studies to measure social capital, yield highly non-robust results in panel estimation due to missing observations problem. Future studies in social capital intending to use panel estimation therefore need to find trust-alternative variables to proxy for social capital, and this paper has proposed four such variables.

The use of panel estimation technique extends the evidence of social capital significance to economic growth and property rights, since the previous social capital studies rely heavily on cross-sectional estimation technique. Due to the availability of annual observations of the trust-alternative variables, this paper is able to find better results as compared to estimation using generalized trust data.

The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of legal institutions and property rights protection on corporate innovation among developing countries.

To testify these hypotheses, we use firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, and country-level information from Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Development Indicators and Global Competitiveness Reports. The final data set consists of 24,166 firm observations, from 41 developing countries.

By using a wide range of control variables, the results propose that well-organized legal institutions stimulate corporate innovation . More precisely, a strong rule of law, effective government and protected property rights encourage firm-level innovation. Countries’ rule of law guarantees to solve disputes between parties and provide legitimate rights in case of innovation replication. Rule of law also directs that rules made by policymakers to secure the rights of innovators are well enforced. Moreover, strong property rights ensure innovators that the innovations are protected, and in case of any infringement, the guilty party will be punished and fined.

This study aims to investigate the role of all effective aspects legal institutions and property rights protection on corporate innovation among developing countries. Such security to prevent unlawful duplication will ultimately increase innovation.

After the precipitated decline of the Soviet Empire and its satellite states, a system change seemed to be called for, and many countries embarked on social and political reforms focussing on property structures in the economy. This raised the issue of governance in the institutions that would constitute the structures in which production would have to take place. In particular, some Central European countries opted for mass privatisations of the means of production, on the face of it so as to have the people participate in the wealth of the nation. In fact, the wealth of the nation depends on the structures in which it is constituted. Dissipation of property rights will reduce the value of the nation's productive capital, whereas an intelligent structure that creates good governance structures at the same time, increases the value of the producing capital. This relatively simple insight lies at the heart of our understanding of how to analyse different processes of mass privatisation. This essay develops a theoretical framework by which different governance structures can be analysed. The framework consists of a blend of the economic theory of property rights, new institutional economics and Austrian economic theory.

This study aims to examine how property rights, financial liberalization and the control of corruption at the country level influence the inward and outward global engagement of domestic firms from developing countries. The author also examines whether firms with certain resource endowments such as human capital or technological capabilities are better positioned to globalize as the aforementioned institutional factors evolve.

Using a sample of 18,365 firms from 57 developing countries and multilevel modeling, the author shows that institutional factors are related to inward and outward global engagement.

The author finds that firms with human capital are more likely to move outward in the presence of lower levels of corruption. Domestic firms possessing technological capabilities are more likely to engage inward as financial liberalization eases the access to capital.

Many existing studies that have investigated the impact of institutional factors on internationalization by developing country firms have bundled different institutions together therefore sacrificing a focus on the effect of specific institutions on these firm decisions. While the author knows that institutions matter for developing country firm globalization, there is limited research on which institutions matter. There is also a debate on how institutions matter for developing country firms. The study sheds light on these aspects. The author also uses hierarchical linear modelling and uses both country- and firm-level variables.

As electronic commerce expands, credible property rights in key sectors are necessary. This article identifies three layers of an electronic commerce network – infrastructure, commercial services, and trust – and then outlines five conditions of property rights that are being fulfilled in varying degrees in the developed and developing worlds. The main challenge for the developing world is to concentrate on adequate infrastructural provision. The challenge for the developed world is in determining appropriate property rights for the supportive commercial services needed for electronic commerce as well as issues of consumer and business trust. Given the global nature of electronic commercial transactions, both developed and developing countries are involved in framing rules at the global level that resonate and are credible with domestic conditions and institutions.

Clearly defined and enforceable property rights are commonly recognized as prerequisites to economic calculation and the market process. The purpose of this paper is to argue that when entrepreneurs add or subtract certain rights from the bundle of rights that constitute a property right they face a classic planner’s dilemma: the need to separate the technologically possible from the economically feasible. Traditionally, prices provide the signals needed to resolve the planners dilemma, but because prices refer to the entire bundle of rights that constitutes property, the entrepreneur is unable to immediately identify the combination of rights that isolates the attribute of a good consumers desire to purchase. Creating new bundles of property rights results in new prices, which generate new information essential to further developing economically viable arrangements of property rights; hence, property rights are dynamic.

The paper develops the theory of dynamic property rights, and then offers two case studies that illustrate different elements in the theory. One case study applies the theory to productive entrepreneurship, specifically in the sharing economy. The second case study applies the theory to protective entrepreneurship via a historical study of land title use in England and France. The author concludes with policy implications.

Recognizing that property rights are dynamic has several important implications. Restricting the bundling or de-bundling of property rights is a form of intervention in the market process equivalent to price fixing. Similarly, efforts to support property rights protecting institutions need to account for the fact that property rights bundles are not necessarily static but control over them needs to be stable and predictable. Finally, a more robust and accurate conceptualization of the marking process and what it means to “economize” on scarce resources does not just include the efficient allocation of property rights, but also the efficient allocation of the underlying rights bundles themselves.

A dynamic theory of property rights allows the author to understand how property rights evolve and offer an account of different property rights regimes by highlight the living connection between productive and protective entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to integrate ideas from market process theory with entrepreneurship and institutional evolution. The paper extends the ideas in the UCLA property rights school to illuminate two case studies – one highly relevant to current policy makers, and the other relevant to development economists.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of institutional developments – market economy, financial deepening, private sector, property rights and rule of law – affecting the bank efficiency in China.

First, profit efficiency and cost efficiency scores of banks at the firm‐year level were estimated using a stochastic efficiency frontier approach. Then the results were aggregated at the regional level. Regional differences in the timing and extent of the institutional developments impacting bank efficiency were exploited.

It was observed that most institutional variables play an important role in affecting bank efficiency and additionally banks tend to operate more efficiently in those regions with greater presence of private sector and more property rights awareness.

The data on a number of important institutional variables such as property rights and rule of law are not easily available or importantly do not vary that much across years. However, based on whatever information available, it is apparent that institutional development is crucial to bank performance and also eventual economic growth.

This paper is believed to be the first attempt to empirically examine the role of institutional factor affecting bank efficiency especially in a transition country.

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical evaluation of the potential of new institutional economics (NIE) in third world development.

The paper reviews various theories under NIE from both conceptual and empirical perspectives. It then reviews the various definitions of institutions and show that institutions are essential to overcome problems of information and uncertainty.

The review finds that weak institutions can undermine development and hence governments in developing countries should strengthen their institutions to provide greater scope for efficient functioning of markets. Where the market does not work owing to high transactions costs, traditional institutions of collective action and group decision making can work and hence need to be recognised.

The major implications of the paper is that in developing countries, a clear understanding of various institutions such as user groups, inter‐linked credit markets, rotational irrigation etc. is needed before they are replaced or modified by other institutions. The main limitations of NIE are that there can be capture by elites of various institutional innovations in rural areas, and that it does not explicitly consider income distribution and uncertainty which are glossed over and hence remain areas for future research.

This paper critically reviews the various institutional environments that developing countries face in addressing development issues.

Property rights are often seen to be the cause and the solution of a wide range of social problems especially those affecting the natural environment. But, the property rights box is indeed pandoran, spawning as many questions as it answers as a function of diverse theoretical perspectives. The literature on property rights is not homogeneous so that interpretations of problems and suggestions for solutions are highly diverse. Consequently, the value of property rights theory in understanding or solving social problems can be problematic. The recent interest in property rights theory has been spawned by the focus on the “takings” issue where a particular perspective of private property rights, as a form of natural rights, has “re”‐emerged. This “new” private property rights perspective portends radical consequences for environmental management. But the theme of this paper is that this methodology adds little insight to the understanding of property rights and environmental problems.