{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.01680672268907563, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.9937106918239, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Property Rights—A Temporary Relief for the Poor?

Departing from de Soto's recent volume on property rights, the author argues that before assessing the extent to which lack of unified property registers limits economic development, it is necessary to know whether small businesses are seriously hampered by their informal status. Access to formalised sources of credit is not necessary crucial: the extralegal sector has its own networks, it is argued. Referring to the history of Turkish suburbs after the Second World War, the question is raised: what might happen if squatters in developing countries acquired property rights to the land on which they had squatted? Poor people with a short time horizon might well be tempted to sell their property in order to survive—and might then go on to another extralegal area and settle there. This would involve a transfer of wealth, but they might lose the social infrastructure they had in the old place.