Recent Publications: Tim Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

"Property Rights and Economic Development" by Tim Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak is forthcoming as one of the chapters in the Volume V of the Handbook of Development Economics edited by Dani Rodrik and Mark Rosenzweig. The chapter develops a unified analytical framework for studying the role of property rights in economic development. It addresses two fundamental and related questions concerning the relationship between property rights and economic activity. (i) What are the mechanisms through which property rights affect economic activity? (ii) What are the determinants of property rights? In answering these, the chapter surveys some of the main empirical and theoretical ideas from the extensive literature on the topic.