Ambiguous Property Rights: A Taxonomic and Exploratory Account of Post-colonial Rural Housing in Chinese Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper explains the nature of David Li’s concept of ambiguous property rights and three angles to see right ambiguity from a Coasian-constrained choice-theoretical perspective and elaborate on that ambiguity in terms of five scenarios of de jure and de facto rights. The case of indigenous village housing in post-colonial Hong Kong under a mature system of the rule of law is used to demonstrate the ambiguities due to a gap between de jure and de facto property rights that may not degenerate into anarchy due to rational choices made under common law constraints driven ultimately by the land market. The implications of the case study for evaluating ambiguities in property rights in China are also discussed.