Case studies on the economic causes and effects of institutional change

The chapters in this dissertation exploit plausibly exogenous variation in institutions (e.g., laws and compliance procedures) to examine the following questions: Can the assignment of property rights to groups (rather than individuals) end the exploitation of common pool resources? How important are transparent legal institutions to the functioning of credit markets? Does government crowd out the private provision of environmental public goods?;Chapter 1 examines a property rights regime in which a fishery-wide catch quota is split into two portions---one assigned to a cooperative (into which fishermen self-select), and the other exploited as a commons by the group choosing to remain independent. The theory informs detailed empirical analysis of a co-op that formed in an Alaska commercial salmon fishery from 2002-2004. The evidence suggests the co-op increased the value of the fishery by at least 25 percent. These gains were accrued through information and infrastructure sharing and coordination of harvest.;Chapter 2 exploits variation in legal institutions across American Indian reservations to study a specific causal mechanism from institutions to growth. The variation is due to federal legislation, implemented during the 1950s and 1960s, that forced some tribes to transfer judicial jurisdiction to states while other tribes retained jurisdiction. The evidence indicates that reservations put under state jurisdiction experienced more than a 66 percent increase in private per-capita credit shortly after implementation. Estimates using more recent data indicate that state jurisdiction increases the probability that an American Indian's home loan application will be originated by 50 percent. These findings are consistent with the theory that lenders have a better understanding of creditor rights under state law.;Chapter 3 examines the effects of U.S government land programs on private land trust conservation. It also provides the first analysis of other county-level determinants of growth in land trusts, which are a striking new institution for executing land conservation. This chapter examines a unique panel of data from The Nature Conservancy, Land Trust Alliance censuses, Conservation Reserve, Wetland Reserve, and federal land holdings (e.g., national parks and forests). The evidence indicates there has been both crowding in and crowding out, depending on the government program.