 | Land Tenure Security and Agricultural Productivity 
September 9, 2009
Mercatus On Policy
Daniel Sacks, Karol Boudreaux |
| Achieving land tenure reform is by no means an easy or quick process. However, the benefits over the long term can lead to substantial gains for smallholder farmers’ competitiveness.
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 | Urbanisation and Informality in Africa's Housing Markets
June 9, 2008
Journal Articles
Karol Boudreaux |
| A maze of regulations and administrative barriers has imposed high transaction costs on formal-sector housing entrepreneurs. By raising the costs of providing low-income housing, African governments bear much responsibility for driving formal-sector entrepreneurs out of the housing market and for driving their citizens into slums.
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 | The Legal Empowerment of the Poor: Titling and Poverty Alleviation in Post-Apartheid South Africa
June 1, 2008
Journal Articles
Karol Boudreaux |
| Titling programs transfer property titles from the public sector to private individuals and in the process allow them to convert property into capital. This process is a key step on the road towards the legal empowerment of the poor. However, legal empowerment of the poor is about even more than converting property into capital.
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 | Empowering the Poor Through Property Rights
April 14, 2008
Books
Karol Boudreaux |
| Fair access to property rights goes way beyond their role as economic assets. Secure and accessible property rights provide a sense of identity, dignity, and belonging to people of very different economic means. They create reliable ties of rights and obligations among community members as well as a system of mutual recognition of rights and responsibilities beyond the local community.
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 | International Property Rights Index 2008: Langa Case Study
February 26, 2008
Books
Karol Boudreaux |
| The 2008 International Property Rights Index (IPRI) is an international comparative study that measures the significance of both physical and intellectual property rights and their protection for economic well-being. The current study analyzes data for 115 countries around the globe, representing ninety-six percent of world GDP. Of great importance, the 2008 gauge incorporates data of PR protection from various sources, often directly obtained from expert surveys within the evaluated countries.
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 | Paths to Property: Approaches to Institutional Change in International Development
February 1, 2008
Books
Karol Boudreaux, Paul Dragos Aligica |
| The key to successful property reform lies in understanding the de facto environment, including the stakeholders involved, the broad institutional environment, and the customs that apply to property use and transfer. Each factor calls for a discrete response to promote cooperation. When evolutionary or legislative changes to a property-rights environment reflect broad social consensus about how to allocate resources, these changes are more likely to be respected and enforced.
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 | Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Namibia: A Case Study
February 20, 2007
Mercatus Policy Series
Karol Boudreaux |
| Through Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), Namibians who form conservancies now have legal rights to manage wildlife and benefit from tourism. With these secure rights, and with help from NGOs and the government, something extraordinary is happening: wildlife numbers, which were decimated by war and poaching, are rising.
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 | Property Rights and Resource Conflict in the Sudan
June 26, 2006
Books
Karol Boudreaux |
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 | The Effects of Property Titling in Langa Township, South Africa
April 1, 2006
Mercatus Policy Series
Karol Boudreaux |
| Can property reforms create a path to prosperity? In Langa Township, South Africa efforts have been underway for well over a decade to provide secure, legal titles to previously disenfranchised citizens. Today, most homes- though not shacks- have titles. Can this policy serve as an example for others to follow? Has this government policy led to economic growth and poverty alleviation for Langa’s residents?
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| The Human Face of Resource Conflict: Property and Power in Nigeria
August 1, 2005
Journal Articles
Karol Boudreaux |
| This article examines current high levels of violent conflict in Plateau State in central Nigeria using an economic property-rights analysis that draws on the work of Harold Demsetz, Robert Cooter, Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney. The thesis of the article is that this wide-spread violent conflict over resource use/access is tied, in important ways, to the passage of federal legislation in Nigeria that nationalized land. |
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