Entrevista por Antonio Salazar (@antoniosalazarg) para La Gaveta Económica (abril de 2018, pp. 16–19). Hay personas a las que entrevistar resulta un placer. Frente a quienes de todo pretenden saber y que apenas meditan las respuestas, existen otras que esperan a dar con la idea pretendida y hacen un esfuerzo…

Discussions on economic development have lately focused on the role of institutions in protecting property rights and reducing transaction costs. In particular, the idea has taken root that development would benefit from facilitating access to legality. It is thought that, if those in possession of even small buildings and plots…

In this paper, published at the Journal of Institutional Economics (2017), I trace the disconnection between economic analysis and property law as well as repeated policy failures in land titling and administrative simplification to a theoretical choice: most law-and-economics analyses of “property” rights have retained a contractual view that is…

To what extent did Ancient Roman institutions facilitate the free exchange of economic resources? In “The Institutions of Roman Markets,” I explore the palliative methods used by Roman law to enable market exchange. The paper, whose Working Paper you can download here, is forthcoming (2018) as Ch. 17 in Giuseppe…

During the economic crisis in countries that had experienced housing bubbles, from the US to Spain, thousands of homeowners faced foreclosures. With such a large number of home evictions, civil organizations took action against banks, which were blamed for the crisis, and judges often ruled in favor of homeowners. …

The law-and-economics of property throws doubts on the prospects of blockchain for transacting durable high-value assets. You are free to sell your house contractually through a deed or, perhaps, a blockchain even if it is partly owned by your spouse or there is a mortgage on it. However, both your…