I examine a complicated bargaining problem in the acquisition of private land and water rights by Los Angeles in Owens Valley. This is a pivotal episode in the political economy of contemporary...
Gary D. Libecap, Zeynep Kocabiyik Hansen
In the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, the North American agricultural frontier moved for the first time into semi-arid regions where farming was vulnerable to drought. Farmers who migrated to...
REGULATORY REMEDIES TO THE COMMON POOL: (2007)
Gary D. Libecap, James L. Smith
When competing production rights to a common-pool resource are held by rivals, efficient management may be threatened. The characteristic “race to produce, ” damaging
Barbara Alexander, Gary D. Libecap
This paper examines sharply different constituent reaction to the Supreme Court’s annulment of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in 1935 and...
Joseph J. Bial, Daniel Houser, Gary D. Libecap
compliance Although, there is a growing literature on scientific estimates and regulatory instruments for international efforts to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the underlying political...
0-08-046099-2
Gary D. Libecap, I. Introduction
This paper examines the confused and weak nature of private water rights that limits the extent of water markets. Since water values have risen sharply in the past 10-15 years, a Demsetz-like (1967)...
State Regulation of Open-Access, Common-Pool Resources (2003)
"Open-access, common-pool resources, such as many fisheries, aquifers, oil pools, and the atmosphere, often require some type of regulation of private access and use to avoid wasteful exploitation....
Transaction Costs and Coalition Stability under Majority Rule (2003)
Johnson, Ronald N., Libecap, Gary D.
Government program allocations are more stable and more equally shared than theory predicts. Although various explanations have been offered, we emphasize the high transaction costs of political...
This article examines difficulties with bureaucratic reform for transitional economies, drawing on the American experience. Bureaucracies have incentive and performance problems that could retard...
Public Choice Issues in Collective Action: Global Warming Treaty Negotiation and Compliance (2000)
Bial, Joseph R., Houser, Daniel, Libecap, Gary D.
"There is a large and growing body of literature on scientific issues and regulatory instruments, such as emissions permits, in international efforts to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The...
Ronald N. Johnson, Gary D. Libecap
Abstract. This paper reconsiders the analogy between competitive markets and the political process that is central to much of the literature on the efficiency of government transfers. The key problem...
The Determinants and Impact of Property Rights: Land Titles on the Brazilian Frontier (1996)
Alston, Lee J., Libecap, Gary D., Schneider, Robert
This article provides new empirical results regarding the demand for and supply of title, the impact of title on land value, and its effects on agricultural investment on Brazilian frontiers. We...
THE FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED CARTELS AND DEVELOPMENT OF FEDERAL FARM POLICY (1995)
HOFFMAN, ELIZABETH, LIBECAP, GARY D.
While economists recognize that private cartels are dfficult to sustain, they are too sanguine about the prospects for government-assisted cartels. Although the state's coercive power would seem to...
Contracting for Property Rights (1989)
Prepared for The Law and Economics of Property Rights, edited by Terry L. Anderson and Fred S. McChesney.
AGENCY GROWTH, SALARIES AND THE PROTECTED BUREAUCRAT (1989)
JOHNSON, RONALD N., LIBECAP, GARY D.
In contrast to numerous assertions in the literature on bureaucratic behavior that government employees seek to promote the growth of their agencies to increase their salaries, this paper offers...
Bureaucratic Rules, Supervisor Behavior, and the Effect on Salaries in the Federal Government (1989)
LEGISLATING COMMONS: THE NAVAJO TRIBAL COUNCIL AND THE NAVAJO RANGE (1980)
LIBECAP, GARY D., JOHNSON, RONALD N.
The article argues that chronic overgrazing on the Navajo Reservation is the result of policies of the BIA and the Tribal Council. In support of that hypothesis the paper outlines the nature of...
The evolution of private mineral rights : Nevada's Comstock Lode / (1976)
Thesis--University of Pennsylvania.
The Determinants of Progressive Era Reform: The Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906
We examine three theories of Progressive Era regulation: public interest, industry capture, and information manipulation by the federal bureaucracy and muckraking press. Based on analysis of...
A model of rural conflict: violence and land reform policy in Brazil
ALSTON, LEE J., LIBECAP, GARY D., MUELLER, BERNARDO
This paper analyzes the underlying determinants of rural land conflicts in Brazil involving squatters, landowners, the federal government, the courts and INCRA, the land reform agency. A model is...
Water Markets in the West: Prices, Trading, and Contractual Forms
Jedidiah Brewer, Robert Glennon, Alan Ker, Gary D. Libecap
Rising urban and environmental demand for water has created growing pressure to re-allocate water from traditional agricultural uses. The evolution of water markets has been more complicated than...
The Rise of the Chicago Packers and the Origins of Meat Inspection and Antitrust
The Meat Inspection Act of 1891 and the Sherman Act of 1890 are shown to be closely tied. This link makes clearer Congress' intent in enacting the legislation. Both laws were products of conditions...
Gary D. Libecap, Zeynep Kocabiyik Hansen
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the North American agricultural frontier moved for the first time into semi-arid regions where farming was vulnerable to drought. Farmers who migrated to...
The Determinants and Impact of Property Rights: Land Titles on the Brazilian Frontier
Lee J. Alston, Gary D. Libecap, Robert Schneider
This paper provides new empirical results regarding the demand and supply of title, its impact on land value, and its effects on agricultural investment on Brazilian frontiers. We use survey data...
In this provocative book, Hernando de Soto argues that the reason why transitional and developing economies have had such limited success with adopting capitalism is the lack of formal property...
Libecap, Gary D., Hansen, Zeynep Kocabiyik
The weather-information problem faced by settlers of semi-arid regions of the Great Plains hindered their attempts to adapt their crops, techniques, and farm sizes. Episodes of homestead settlement...
One of the most colorful episodes in American business history is the development of the Texas oil industry. From the 1956 movie Giant to the 1978 1991 television series Dallas the Texas oil boom has...
In this well-written, documented, and technically complete book, Hugh Gorman describes the response of the American petroleum industry to pollution over the course of the twentieth century. The...
Gary D. Libecap, Zeynep Kocabiyik Hansen
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the North American agricultural frontier moved into semi-arid regions of the Great Plains where farming was vulnerable to drought. Farmers who migrated to...
Transactions Costs and Coalition Stability under Majority Rule.
Ronald N. Johnson, Gary D. Libecap
In this paper we examine the discrepancy between theoretical predictions of unstable majorities and observed stability. Minimum winning coalitions divide program benefits among their members,...
The economic evolution of petroleum property rights in the United States.
Gary D. Libecap, James L. Smith
We examine Harold Demsetz's (1967) prediction that property rights emerge and are refined as the benefits of doing so exceed the costs in the context of oil and gas resources in the U.S. Familiar...
State Regulation of Open-Access, Common-Pool Resources.
Open-access, common-pool resources, such as many fisheries, aquifers, oil pools, and the atmosphere, often require some type of regulation of private access and use to avoid wasteful exploitation....
This paper explores the origins of federal regulation of food, drugs and meat. We argue that developments in these industries during the late 19th century—technological changes that gave rise to...
Lee J. Alston, Gary D. Libecap, Bernardo Mueller
In this paper we examine how an interest group with limited resources (votes and campaign contributions) nevertheless effectively influenced political policy through the control of information to...
Chinatown: Transaction Costs in Water Rights Exchanges. The Owens Valley Transfer to Los Angeles.
I re-examine the notorious Owens Valley water transfer to Los Angeles, which is a pivotal episode in the political economy of contemporary western water allocation. Negotiated between 1905 and 1935,...
I examine the assignment of private property rights during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to five natural resources on federal lands in the Far West. Assigning property rights required...
Land, property rights and privatization in Brazil
Mueller, Bernardo, Alston, Lee, Libecap, Gary D., Schneider, Robert
Transaction Costs and Coalition Stability under Majority Rule
Ronald N. Johnson, Gary D. Libecap
Government program allocations are more stable and more equally shared than theory predicts. Although various explanations have been offered, we emphasize the high transaction costs of political...
The Failure of Government-Sponsored Cartels and Development of Federal Farm Policy.
Hoffman, Elizabeth, Libecap, Gary D
While economists recognize that private cartels are difficult to sustain, they are too sanguine about the prospects for government-assisted cartels. Although the state's coercive power would seem to...
The Rise of the Chicago Packers and the Origins of Meat Inspection and Antitrust.
The Meat Inspection Act of 1891 and the Sherman Act of 1890 are closely tied. This link makes clearer the intent of Congress in enacting the legislation. Both laws were products of economic...
Agency Growth, Salaries and the Protected Bureaucrat.
Johnson, Ronald N, Libecap, Gary D
In contrast to numerous assertions in the literature on bureaucratic behavior that government employees seek to promote the growth of their agencies to increase their salaries, this paper offers...
Information distortion and competitive remedies in government transfer programs: The case of ethanol
Ronald N. Johnson, Gary D. Libecap
This paper reconsiders the analogy between competitive markets and the political process that is central to much of the literature on the efficiency of government transfers. The key problem is that...
The New Deal increased the amount and breadth of agricultural regulation in the economy, shifting it from providing public goods and transfers to controlling supplies and directing government...
The Self-Enforcing Provisions of Oil and Gas Unit Operating Agreements: Theory and Evidence
Gary D. Libecap, James L. Smith
This paper extends the existing theory and empirical investigation of unitization contracts. It highlights the importance of incentive-compatibility and self-enforcement and the bargaining problems...
Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930's
Zeynep K. Hansen, Gary D. Libecap
We provide a new and more complete analysis of the origins of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, one of the most severe environmental crises in North America in the 20th Century. Severe drought and wind...
Between 1905 and 1934 over 869 farmers in Owens Valley, California sold their land and associated water rights to Los Angeles, 250 miles to the southwest. This agriculture-to-urban water transfer...
In addressing environmental and natural resource problems, there is a move away from primary reliance upon centralized regulation toward assignment of property rights to mitigate the losses of...
Open-Access Losses and Delay in the Assignment of Property Rights
Even though formal property rights are the theoretical response to open access involving natural and environmental resources, they typically are adopted late after considerable waste has been...
The Economic Evolution of Petroleum Property Rights in the United States.
Libecap, Gary D, Smith, James L
We examine Harold Demsetz's prediction that property rights emerge as the benefits of doing so exceed the costs in the context of oil and gas resources in the United States. Familiar influences on...
A model of rural conflict: violence and land reform policy in Brazil
ALSTON, LEE J., LIBECAP, GARY D., MUELLER, BERNARDO
This paper analyzes the underlying determinants of rural land conflicts in Brazil involving squatters, landowners, the federal government, the courts and INCRA, the land reform agency. A model is...
In this provocative book, Hernando de Soto argues that the reason why transitional and developing economies have had such limited success with adopting capitalism is the lack of formal property...
Rights-based institutions have been adopted for certain natural resources in order to more effectively mitigate the losses of the common pool. Past central government regulation has not proved...
Jedidiah Brewer, Gary D. Libecap
We examine the implications of the public trust doctrine in natural resource protection and conservation. A model of litigation and settlement among disputing parties suggests that the public trust...
In one way or another, all environmental and natural resource problems associated with overexploitation or under provision of public goods, arise from incompletely defined and enforced property...
Bureaucratic Opposition to the Assignment of Property Rights: Overgrazing on the Western Range
This paper analyzes the roles of the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior in restricting the assignment of property rights to rangeland in the American West. While common property conditions...
The Political Allocation of Mineral Rights: A Re?Evaluation of Teapot Dome
This paper re examines the naval reserve oil leases issued by Interior Secretary Fall in 1922 that led to the Teapot Dome controversy. The analysis shows that the leases were the only efficient oil...
The Political Economy of Crude Oil Cartelization in the United States, 1933?1972
This article examines a government-sponsored cartel that fixed domestic crude oil prices in interstate markets from 1933 through 1972. Although the cartel raised and stabilized nominal oil prices...
Institutional Choice and the Development of U.S. Agricultural Policies in the 1920s
Hoffman, Elizabeth, Libecap, Gary D.
We examine U.S. agricultural policy as an institutional choice. Price controls in World War I had demonstrated the government's influence in markets, and with falling crop prices in the 1920s,...
The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Institutions
This paper examines the origins and economic effects of the two dominant land demarcation systems: metes and bounds (MB) and the rectangular system (RS). Under MB property is demarcated by its...
The Allocation and Dissipation of Resource Rents: Implications for Fishery Reform
Gary D. Libecap, Terry L. Anderson
In the move to adopt rights based arrangements for renewable resources to avoid the losses of open access and the inefficiencies of prescriptive regulation, we argue that grandfathering the...
Markets - Water Markets: Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin and the US Southwest
Gary D. Libecap, R. Quentin Grafton, Clay Landry, J.R. O’Brien
Worldwide supplies of fresh water are increasingly scarce relative to demand. This problem is likely to be exacerbated with climate change. In this paper, we examine water markets in both...
The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Institutions
This paper examines the economic effects of the two dominant land demarcation systems, metes and bounds (MB) and the rectangular system (RS). Under MB property is demarcated by its perimeter as...
Regulatory Remedies to the Common Pool: The Limits to Oil Field Unitization
Gary D. Libecap, James L. Smith
We examine the potential inability of voluntary unitization to remedy common property losses associated with oil field development. Unlike the traditional literature, we show that if the field...
I examine a complicated bargaining problem in the acquisition of private land and water rights by Los Angeles in Owens Valley. This is a pivotal episode in the political economy of contemporary...