CIAO DATE: 06/2011
March 2010
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Although protecting the entitlements of some requires preventing others from claiming and controlling those same resources, much recent research regarding property rights and economic development treats the level of property rights security in a country as homogeneous. Widely used cross-national indices of institutional quality—initially designed to assess the property security of foreign investors—fail to consider marginalized groups. Using a new indicator that measures the property insecurity of ethno-cultural minorities, this article finds significant variation in the risk of expropriation faced by different groups in the same country. Findings also show that although secure property rights for elites may be positively related to development, aggregate long-run growth occurs in the presence of significant property insecurity for marginalized minorities.
Resource link: Security of Property Rights for Whom? [PDF] - 313K