2017 International Property Rights Index Unveiled

The Austrian Economics Center is proud to release in partnership with Property Rights Alliance the 2017 International Property Rights Index. The Index measures the strength of physical property rights, intellectual property rights, and the legal and political environments that contain them. The 2017 IPRI will be officially launched July 11th in Buenos Aires in partnership with the Argentinian think tank Libertad y Progreso.

Covering 127 countries, 98% of world GDP, and 93% of the world’s population, the Index highlights the vital role property rights play in shaping society and the global economy.

Famed economist and author of The Mystery of Capital, Hernando De Soto, commented that the findings in the Index this year were “striking,” and that it offered hopeful insights for world leaders tackling poverty and terrorism in their countries.

The Index includes correlations between the IPRI scores and other measures of social and economic well-being. This year the IPRI ratings correlated most strongly with global entrepreneurship (GEI), network readiness (NRI), civic activism, the human development (HDI), the number of researchers in R&D, and environmental performance (EPI- Yale).

Additionally, the Index includes helpful case studies from activists in-the-field showing how diverse property rights issues can be, and how progress can be achieved no matter the country or how poorly rights have been infringed in the past:

• Patent Box in Italy: Light and Shadow of a Special Tax Regime, by Prof. Cesare Galli, Istituto Bruno Leoni
• A Century of Injustice: Rule of Law, Constitutions and Property Rights in Mexico, by Esteban Gonzalez Herrejón, Caminos de la Libertad
• Weak Governments and Partial Protection: Property Rights in the Western Balkans, by Admir Čavalić and Mihailo Gajić, MULTI & Libek
• Property Rights in the Unique and Profitable Venezuelan Energy Sector, by Víctor J. Poleo Uzcátegui, CEDICE
• A Special Case Study on Religion & Property Rights: Property Rights from a Judaism Perspective. Dominion and Property Rights in Judaism, by Dr. Rabbi Joseph Isaac Lifshitz, Shalem College

 See the full report at InternationalPropertyRightsIndex.org