This thesis deals with the legal procedures indicated forchanges in land-related rights, i.e. land use planning andproperty acquisitions. The rules of procedure in this field oflaw are extensive and complicated.

As a first step, the rules of procedure are structured intoa number of procedural types: administrative, cadastral andjudicial. The procedural characteristics and the substantivelegal character of the decisions are clarified andcompared.

In a second step an institutional perspective is adopted,based on economic theory. The different types of procedure areperceived as alternative institutional solutions to the problemof transaction costs in transformations of land-related rightstructures. An economic analysis is made of the transactioncosts arising in the different types of procedure in connectionwith, respectively, permissibility assessment and propertyacquisition assessment.

The administrative procedures present distinct comparativeadvantages in the assessment of permissibility questions, e.g.utility concessions or permits for environmentally hazardousactivity. In these questions, an extensive, heterogeneouscollective of individuals is made subject to external effects.Those effects are divided into smaller value fragments. Throughthe publicity and ready availability of the administrativeprocedures, coupled with the system of politicalaccountability, important information about the preferences ofthe collective concerned can be produced and made to form thebasis of the decision.

The cadastral and judicial procedures present comparativeadvantages in connection with property acquisition assessments,such as compulsory purchase of land or exaction of utilityeasements. For the limited collective of individuals involved,the right of negotiating and concluding agreements willeffectively utilise the high degree of information and thestronger economic incentives for action. The negotiation phasebecomes a low-cost procedure which at the same time acts as aselective mechanism for transactions not requiring the coerciveand more expensive procedure of official assessment. Theself-containment of cadastral and judicial procedures and theirisolation from political influences benefit the quality andcontrol of the documentation on which decisions arefounded.