Private ownership should generally be preferred to public ownership when the incentives to innovate and to contain costs must be strong. In essence, this is the case for capitalism over socialism, explaining the "dynamic vitality" of free enterprise. The great economists of the 1930s and 1940s failed to see the dangers of socialism in part because they focused on the role of prices under social...

Some 47 million Americans—one in six—live in communities run by collective private ownership of residential property. The spread of home-owner associations, condominium associations and cooperatives is transforming planning practices and development design. A nation-wide survey of municipalities and developers demonstrates the existence of two sets of standards and design parameters: those that...

This paper investigates the effects of ownership forms and management structure on the performance of airports around the world. Specifically, we focus on measuring and comparing productive efficiency and profitability among airports owned and operated by government departments, 100% government-owned corporations, independent airport authorities, mixed enterprises with government majority owner...

Property takings are common in the developing world. For example, despite Chinese reforms in 2003 to protect property rights, Chinese governments forced thousands of families to relocate during the buildup to the Beijing Olympics. In recent years, governments in Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Russia, and others have nationalized heavy industry as well as specific firms. Large-scale land ta...

Forest fragmentation threatens the sustainability of forest communities in the eastern United States. Forest communities exhibiting either a low total area or low percentage of intact forest are subject to relatively higher risk of shifts in stand composition towards edge-adapted and invasive species. Such changes in stand composition could result in local extirpation of communities, homogeniza...

One theory argues that state ownership of infrastructure is greater in poor countries because the social returns from investment exceed the private returns by a wider margin. Another theory argues that state ownership is greater when legal and political institutions provide weak enforcement of private property rights or weak limits on government excess. I test these theories using cross-country...

Factors Affecting Public-Private Sector's Support for the Elementary Schools M.H. Hassani Shalmaani, Ph.D. Factors affecting the public-private sector's support for elementary education were identified perusing related legislations, documents, and programs. To validate these factors a sample of 432 elementary school principals was given the list of factors of which 8 were confirme...

— This paper uses data from the 2003/04 Cambodia Household Socioeconomic Survey to investigate the effects of property rights to land. Plots held with a paper documenting ownership in rural Cambodia are found to have higher productivity and land values than other plots, while property rights have weak effects on access to credit. The paper also investigates whether the introduction of private p...

The participation of private landowners in conservation is crucial to efficient biodiversity conservation. This is especially the case in settings where the share of private ownership is large and the economic costs associated with land acquisition are high. We used probit regression analysis and historical participation data to examine the likelihood of participation of Danish forest owners in...