John Gravois, over at Slate, has a fascinating article on attempts to apply the development theories of Peruvian economist, Hernando DeSoto. He characterizes the results as ranging from "ineffective" to "downright harmful." Gravois is right to be suspicious of any program upon which the left and the right can so enthusiastically agree as they have DeSoto's ideas, but I am equally suspicious of revisionist journalism based on a few anecdotes such as this. It would be nice to have a broadly based systematic assessment of the success or failure of DeSoto's theories and those of other land-management economists when applied to the real world. Do any of my readers know of such a survey? If so, drop me an e-mail at debelight@gmail.com
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