Law and Economics Commons^™

Rights-Weakening Federalism, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines whether federalism protects land rights in China from two dimensions. I first compare national law with local institutions of eminent domain, revealing that local governments take much more land than the national government approves, frequently violating, tweaking, and challenging national law. I next examine the impact of interjurisdictional competition on the development of local land institutions, demonstrating that local governments are weakening individual land rights for the benefits of mobile capital. Overall, Chinese federalism weakens rather than strengthens individual land rights and should be called rights-weakening federalism.

This China case also has general theoretical implications. Leading property …

Enhancing Judicial Institutions: Enhancing Economic Development, Stephane Alia Haisley

Duke Law Master of Judicial Studies Theses

Since the 1980s, scholars and development banks have recognized the link between judicial institutions and economic growth. This thesis proposes to explore the role of judicial institutions in the performance of economies and questions whether enhancing judicial institutions can result in enhancing economic development in developing countries. Since the 1990s development banks have explored the role of judicial institutions in the quest for economic development. Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have done this through the pursuit of judicial reform efforts in countries with ailing economies. The focus has been on improving the efficiency of the …