This book is a collection of papers given at the seventh biennial conference held at the University of Cambridge in March 2008, and is the fifth in the series Modern Studies in Property Law. The Property Law conference has become well-known as a unique opportunity for property lawyers to meet and confer both formally and informally. This volume is a refereed and revised selection of the papers given there. It covers a broad range of topics of immediate importance, not only in domestic law but also on a worldwide scale.

A critique of the greatest reallocation of resources in the history of the world and an analysis of its effects on indigenous peoples, the growth of property rights, and the evolution of ideas that make up the foundation of the modern world.

This book explores the history of public land tenure records, which first began in colonial Massachusetts as English settlers and Native Americans tried to resolve differing ideas about rights to land in the seventeenth century. In South Australia, a similar method of state certification of land ownership arose in the nineteenth century, through Torrens system title registration – a process that would be widely adopted in British and American colonies as a particularly effective way of guaranteeing absolute ('fee simple') ownership over indigenous peoples’ land. This book explores the similarities between these two record systems, highlighting how similar settlement patterns and religious beliefs in both places focused attention on recording land tenure, and illustrating how these record systems encouraged new ways of thinking about rights to and on land.

This book presents, analyses and evaluates the Principles of Latin American Contract Law (PLACL), a recent set of provisions aiming at the harmonisation of contract law at a regional level. As such, the PLACL are the most recent exponent of the many proposals for transnational sets of 'principles of contract law' that were drafted or published over the past 20 years, either at the global or the regional level. These include the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, the Principles of European Contract Law, the (European) Draft Common Frame of Reference and the Principles of Asian Contract Law. The PLACL are the product of a working group comprising legal academics from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. The 111 articles of the instrument deal with problems of general contract law, such as formation, interpretation and performance of contracts, as well as remedies for breach. The book aims to introduce the PLACL to an international audience by putting them in their historical and comparative context, including other transnational harmonisation measures and initiatives. The contributions are authored by drafters of the PLACL and contract law experts from Europe and Latin America.

Law can be viewed as a body of rules and legal sanctions that channel behavior in socially desirable directions — for example, by encouraging individuals to take proper precautions to prevent accidents or by discouraging competitors from colluding to raise prices. The incentives created by the legal system are thus a natural subject of study by economists. Moreover, given the importance of law to the welfare of societies, the economic analysis of law merits prominent treatment as a subdiscipline of economics. Our hope is that this two volume Handbook will foster the study of the legal system by economists.*The two volumes form a comprehensive and accessible survey of the current state of the field.*Chapters prepared by leading specialists of the area.*Summarizes received results as well as new developments.

Governments and development agencies spend considerable resources building property and company registries to protect property rights. When these efforts succeed, owners feel secure enough to invest in their property and banks are able use it as collateral for credit. Similarly, firms prosper when entrepreneurs can transform their firms into legal entities and thus contract more safely. Unfortunately, developing registries is harder than it may seem to observers, especially in developed countries, where registries are often taken for granted. As a result, policies in this area usually disappoint. Benito Arruñada aims to avoid such failures by deepening our understanding of both the value of registries and the organizational requirements for constructing them. Presenting a theory of how registries strengthen property rights and reduce transaction costs, he analyzes the major trade-offs and proposes principles for successfully building registries in countries at different stages of development. Arruñada focuses on land and company registries, explaining the difficulties they face, including current challenges like the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States and the dubious efforts made in developing countries toward universal land titling. Broadening the account, he extends his analytical framework to other registries, including intellectual property and organized exchanges of financial derivatives. With its nuanced presentation of the theoretical and practical implications, Institutional Foundations of Impersonal Exchange significantly expands our understanding of how public registries facilitate economic growth.