Property Rights

Lessons from Uruguay’s Drug Reform

Uruguay is set to become the first country to legalize the manufacture, distribution, and sale of marijuana. This is a meaningful step toward reducing drug-related crimes, eliminating wasteful spending, and shifting the debate from criminalization to individual...

It Is Capitalism, Not Democracy, That the Arab World Needs Most: Property rights for aid: this could be the most effective anti-poverty strategy in history

To watch events in Egypt is like seeing a videotape of the Arab Spring being played backwards. The ballot box has been kicked away, the constitution torn up, the military has announced the name of a puppet president – and crowds assemble in Tahrir Square to go wild with joy. The Saudi Arabian monarchy, which was so nervous two years ago, has telegrammed its congratulations to Cairo’s generals. To the delight of autocrats everywhere, Egypt’s brief experiment with democracy seems to have ended in embarrassing failure.

Canadian Property Rights Index

Property rights are fundamental to the prosperity of any economy. Without predictable and enforceable property rights, individuals and businesses cannot receive a return on economic activity. Property rights are also strongly correlated to GDP per capita and foreign...

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The choice of early Canadians to remain closely tied to the British Empire had a major impact on the development of property rights in this country. Although we as a society tend to see ourselves as having more in common with the United States than with the United Kingdom, our system of land ownership, more accurately called real property ownership, does not permit the same level of rights and freedoms over the land we hold as the U.S. system affords. In the United States, landowners usually hold title to the mineral resources located beneath their land; in Canada, this is never the case.