Land Tenure: The Major Schools of Thought

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Land TenureThe Major Schools of Thought
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History of Land Tenure

• Origins of private land in 18th century Englands
  enclousures
• Land relations identified as the origins of
  capitalism by some scholars (Wood)
• Alienation from means of production
• Lockes theory of efficient production

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Property Rights

• Emphasizes the productive potential of
  individually held lands
• Benthem Ricardo Greed Works.
• I have 5 coconuts
• You have 5 bananas
• Trade 2 for 2, and were both better off
• Pareto Optimality
• Tenure Security Title

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Agrarian Structure
Total Area
Total Area
Farm Size
Farm Size
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Agrarian Structure II

• Basically agree with measures of success used by
  Property Rights School (Pareto)
• Tradable title protection from predacious
  actors (including the State) in some cases, but
  not all
• Costly Inequality
• Markets are sources of tenure insecurity

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Common Property

• Distinction between Open Access and Common
  Property
• Source of non-tradable livelihood for the poor
• Emergency Livelihoods
• A Place in the World
• Investment in improvements still occurs

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Institutionalists

• Politics and the Political Economy are the basis
  of land rights Title merely plays a part
• Interested in how society decides on land
  allocation and tenure regimes
• Environmental change is outcome of political
  processes and struggles of actors who use natural
  resources differently

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Questions

• What are some of the assumptions underlying all
  of these modes of thought?
• What about the concept of market failure in
  public goods?
• How should society decide if a tract of forest
  should be owned by the government?
• When might the market failure argument hold
  water?

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Questions

• What might common property or institutional
  scholars say to the following argument the poor
  in the US are better off than the poor in poorer
  countries (Brazil, for example) due to the more
  optimal production encouraged by private property
  rights. So concentrate on national wealth, not
  the immediate plight of the poor.