Institutional foundations of impersonal exchange
Subtitle: theory and policy of contractual registries
By: Benito Arruñada
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 299
ISBN-13: 9780226028323; 9780226028354
Copyright date: 2012
Subjects: Conveyancing; Right of property; Land titles; Registration and transfer; Contracts
Description: With its nuanced presentation of the theoretical and practical implications, this book expands our understanding of how property rights work in today's world.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Misguided property titling and business formalization policies; title: How public registries reduce the transaction costs of impersonal trade; title: Organization of the book; title: Methodology and exposition: approach, assumptions, and caveats; title: The role of verifiable contract publicity in impersonal trade. Impersonal exchange requires rights on assets, not merely on persons ; What do rights on assets mean? difference between rights on assets and rights on persons ; Differences between the economic and legal views on enforcement, or why economics chose to ignore legal property ; Specialization and transactions require multiple rights on each asset, hindering impersonal trade ; Generalizing the analysis ; Prevalence and varying contractual difficulty of sequential exchange ; Information problem of sequential exchange and solving it by selective application of property and contract rules ; Conclusion and next steps; title: Institutions for facilitating property transactions. Private titling: privacy of claims as the starting point ; Publicity of claims ; Registration of rights ; Land titling systems compared: promise and reality ; Organizational requirements: registries' monopoly as a safeguard of their independence; title: Istitutions for facilitating business transactions. Prevalence of "contract rules" in business exchange ; Requirements for applying contract rules: the rationale of formal publicity ; Difficulties involved in organizing company registries: independence and collective action ; Lessons from four historical cases ; Registration and the theory of the firm; title: Strategic issues for creating contractual registries ; Understanding conflict between local and wider legal orders ; Following a logical sequence of reform ; Identifying the key attributes and users of registry services ; Evidence on the effects of property titling ; Evidence on the effects of business formalization; title: The choice of title and registration systems. Private versus public titling ; Voluntary versus universal titling ; Recordation of deeds versus registration of rights ; Choice of business formalization system; title: Conveyancing and documentary formalization. The palliative nature of documentary formalization ; Role of conveyancers in each titling system ; Market-driven changes in the conveyancing industry ; Regulation of conveyancing services in the twenty-first century ; Role of title and credit insurance; title: Organizational challenge. Producing useful information for decisions on formalization systems ; Integrating contractual and administrative registries ; Exploiting technical change ; Structuring incentives for effective public registries ; Reconsidering self-interest ; Concluding remarks ; Recapitulation ; Challenge of public registries.