Property Rights and Property Wrongs: How Power, Institutions, and Norms Shape Economic Conflict in Russia

Description

Secure property rights are central to economic development and stable government, yet difficult to create. Relying on surveys in Russia from 2000 to 2012, Timothy Frye examines how political power, institutions, and norms shape property rights for firms. Through a series of simple survey experiments, Property Rights and Property Wrongs explores how political power, personal connections, elections, concerns for reputation, legal facts, and social norms influence property rights disputes from hostile corporate takeovers to debt collection to renationalization. This work argues that property rights in Russia are better seen as an evolving bargain between rulers and rightholders than as simply a reflection of economic transition, Russian culture, or a weak state. The result is a nuanced view of the political economy of Russia that contributes to central debates in economic development, comparative politics, and legal studies.

Timothy Frye is the Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy at Columbia University and the former Director of The Harriman Institute. Professor Frye received a B.A. in Russian language and literature from Middlebury College in 1986, an M.I.A. from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs in 1992, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1997. He is the author of Brokers and Bureaucrats: Building Market Institutions in Russia (2000), which won the 2001 Hewett Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and Building States and Markets after Communism: The Perils of Polarized Democracy (Cambridge, 2010). He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the US Agency for International Development. He is also Director of the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

'Security of property rights is a key economic institution of capitalism and the most important determinant of growth-enhancing investment. So why don't all countries protect private property rights? The answer is politics. For more than twenty years, Timothy Frye has studied the political legitimacy of property rights in Russia, the country which has carried out a unique century-long experiment in property rights protection. For three quarters of a century Russia destroyed private ownership and then tried to recreate it - with mixed results at best. Studying formal and informal institutions, Professor Frye explains the failures and successes of Russian capitalism. This book is a must read for all future reformers and especially for privatizers.' Sergei Guriev, Chief Economist, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development