Property Rights, Resource Access & Long Run Growth
Abstract: In this paper we use four Canadian Supreme Court decisions that significantly altered the constitutional status of Aboriginal rights to assess the impact of discontinuous changes in property rights on economic growth. We use a series of event studies to assess the effect of the court decisions for Canadian forestry firms. A simulation model based on the resource industry's dynamic optimization problem is used to isolate the access and uncertainty effects reflected in the event study results. Changes in the resource industry's simulated profits are then used within a GE framework to estimate the impact of the decisions on Canadian real GDP per capita growth from 1970-2005.
