LAW & ECONOMICS WORKSHOP
presents
Professor Ryan Bubb
New York University Law School
States, Law, and Property Rights in West Africa
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
4:10 – 6:00
Solarium (room FA2) – Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park
This paper investigates the factors that have shaped the institutions governing property in land in West Africa. Using a regression discontinuity design, I estimate the effects of the divergent de jure property law of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire on de facto property rights institutions. I find that households just on either side of the border between the two states report similar prevalence of rights to transfer their land. My findings provide evidence that formal law has played a limited role in property rights institutions and that instead non-state sources of norms shape the de facto rules governing real property. Furthermore, I show that part of the substantial within-country variation in property rights institutions is explained by economic factors, as hypothesized by Demsetz (1967). In particular, areas that are more suitable for growing cocoa have a greater prevalence of transfer rights, providing evidence that the commercialization of agriculture has led to more individualized property rights institutions.
Ryan Bubb joined the NYU School of Law faculty in Fall 2010. He was formerly a senior researcher at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, created by Congress to examine the causes of the financial crisis, and a policy analyst at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. Bubb's research focuses on business organizations, financial institutions and law and development. Bubb received his B.S. in physics from the College of William and Mary in 1998. After graduating with a J.D. from Yale Law School and an M.A. in economics from Yale University in 2005, he began doctoral work in the department of economics at Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in political economy and government in 2011.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
