Former Taylor Bean & Whitaker Treasurer

Analyze the various ways in which property rights encourage economic development and make at least one recommendation for improving current laws. Explain your rationale.

Property rights encourage economic development through innovation and technological advancements. It is important for businesses to continuously improve or offer new products in order to sustain their place in a competitive market. Innovation is a building-block to newer, better products that can be attributed to previous developments. Property rights support the cycle of development by ensuring that credit and rewards are given to those that improve upon previous work and innovations and that any new ideas, can in turn, be used by others to continue the cycle. Innovations and technological advancements lead to economic growth for the industry and the overall state of the economy, as long as property rights are issued appropriately and held up to their purpose.

One recommendation for improving current laws is for all countries to make even greater efforts to combat counterfeiting and piracy by enacting laws and regulations to strengthen its policies on this. Current laws regarding these issues tend to be weak and often unsupported by the public, in my opinion, due to a lack of understanding of the negative implications that counterfeiting and piracy can have on businesses and the overall economy. This particularly affects knowledge-based industries the most, where it's most difficult to establish property rights in a clear and concise manner.

Based on the possible beneficial externalities from college education, argue for whether or not a case exists for public funding of college education. Explain your rationale.

The level of support currently provided by government for a college education is very minimal. There are obvious benefits to offering public funding of a college education, such as the opportunities it would provide to students who otherwise could not afford to attend college,...