Essays on Property Rights and Governanc

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first two chapters explore changes to the property rights regime in Kenya. The third chapter provides an economic analysis of the governance structure used in online pirate networks to mitigate free-riding.;Chapter one develops and empirically evaluates an economic theory of wealth-destroying private property rights. Privatization's effect on social wealth depends on whether privatizing an asset confers net gains or imposes net losses on society. The decision to privatize, however, depends on whether privatizing an asset confers net gains or imposes net losses on property decision makers. When decision makers are residual claimants, these effects move in tandem; privatization occurs only if it creates social wealth. When decision makers are not residual claimants, these effects may diverge; privatization occurs if it benefits decision makers personally even if privatization destroys social wealth. Evidence from land privatization in Kenya supports the theory's predictions: wealth-destroying private land rights were created in Kajiado, Kenya by property decision makers who were not residual claimants and who benefited personally from land privatization.;Chapter two addresses the debate between the conflict theory and the cooperation theory of institutional change. It identifies two "methodological pits" into which empirical evaluations of conflict and cooperation theories are prone to fall: first, the attempt to evaluate the superiority of conflict (cooperation) theory over cooperation (conflict) theory by testing conflict (cooperation) theory alone; second, the attempt to test cooperation theory by evaluating changes in aggregate costs (benefits). To illustrate these pits in practice, the chapter critically examines Coleman and Mwangi's (2015) study of institutional change among Maasai pastoralists in Kajiado, Kenya.;Chapter three provides a case study of online pirate communities who use peer-to-peer networks to share copyrighted material illegally. Early scholars of peer-to-peer networks posited the possibility of a total network collapse due to issues of free-riding. When these networks are used to distribute copyrighted material illegally, the increased risk of legal punishment adds a further disincentive to contribute. The chapter uses Ostrom's (2005) framework to categorize the rules used in pirate communities to solve collective action problems, evidencing the applicability and robustness of Ostrom's framework for self-governance under less favorable conditions. Through the use of boundary, position, information, and payoff rules, pirate communities are able to mitigate free-riding in the network.