De Soto’s theory of informal property grew from a failed Peruvian mining venture

Evidence

De Soto organized the meeting with Hayek and Ayau in 1979, the year he moved back to Lima. He tells the story of how he initially tried to set himself up in business as the representative of a group of investors who had purchased the rights to gold placer deposits. The mining enterprise failed after the investors went to review their concessions in the rain forest and found hundreds of local people already panning for gold without concessions (Berlau 2003). De Soto had discovered the problem of informal property claims. His contacts in the European and North American neoliberal movement offered an answer to the problem. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1947

Categorization

• CANDY: The origin story of a famous economist’s central idea being a botched gold-mining venture is a fun elevator anecdote.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s trade-institutions reading (Milgrom) — informal property as an institutional gap. — connects to: De Soto attributed informal economic activity to state overregulation, not backwardness — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1923; Hernando de Soto’s Third World framing gave his ideas credibility Geneva-based voices lacked — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1999

Broader Connections

• De Soto attributed informal economic activity to state overregulation, not backwardness #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1923
• Hernando de Soto’s Third World framing gave his ideas credibility Geneva-based voices lacked #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1999