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The Role of a Property-Based Legal System in the Wealth of Nations
Department of Business Law & Taxation
Date: Tuesday 3 June 2008
Time: 12.30 – 2.00 pm
Venue: The Clayfield Room (Room A1.34), Building A, Caulfield Campus
Guest Speaker: Professor O. Lee Reed
O. Lee Reed is Professor of Legal Studies and Robert W. Scherer Chair of Public Policy at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA. He is a Visiting Scholar in Monash University’s Department of Business Law and Taxation in June 2008.
Topic: The Role of a Property-Based Legal System in the Wealth of Nations
Why are some nations so wealthy and other nations so poor when, according to Nobel economist Douglass North, 500 years ago all the world was poor? This seminar examines a property-based legal system as the foundation for strong, diverse economies and the wealth of nations. Property is defined here not as objects (resources) that are owned but as the legal right to own objects. Property is the legal fence of exclusion that permits an individual or group less than the entire population to keep others from trespassing or interfering with what is owned. Beginning with the Netherlands and Great Britain over 200 years ago, nations with strong property-based legal systems have enjoyed maximum conditions for wealth creation and nations with weak such systems have almost universally remained poor, the only exceptions being small nations with a particular natural resource like oil that is valued by other nations. Importantly, however, many nations lacking adequately enforced property systems but having vast natural resources remain poor while nations with almost no natural resources but with strong property systems become wealthy in terms of GDP. Property-based legal systems set rules for acquisition but at the same time protect possession, encouraging resource production by protecting owners from the acquisitiveness of others and recognizing society as the lowest cost provider to maintain legal fences.
RSVP: Leanne Hunt, Phone 03 9903 4198, Email: leanne.hunt@buseco.monash.edu.au
Light lunch will be provided.
WCLRG is a research concentration in the Department of Business Law & Taxation at Monash University. It has been in operation since March 2008, having previously operated as the Corporate Law and Accountability Research Group (CLARG).
If this particular educational activity is relevant to your immediate or long term needs in relation to your professional development and practice of the law, then you should claim one unit for each hour of attendance, refreshment breaks not included.
Group Director
Anthony Forsyth
Email Anthony Forsyth
Tel: + 61 3 9903-2917
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