hat happens when a person owns property? Aside from the well-established financial benefits of equity and potential access to credit, there is the equally strong pull of the American Dream and everything it suggests—the idea that through hard work and determination, it's possible to get ahead, own a home, and achieve some level of success, security, and happiness.But how does this vision change in parts of the world where property rights, if they are present at all, are threatened by weak law enforcement, corruption, crime, and arbitrary government policy? In a recent paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, HBS professor Rafael Di Tella, Sebastian Galiani of the University of Washington, St. Louis, and Ernesto Schargrodsky of the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella delve into this question by comparing the beliefs of two groups of squatters living in the Solano neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
