Hernando De Soto, Author and Economist

To appreciate the irony of Hernando de Soto's advocacy of an inclusive legal framework for property rights in the Third World, you need only know what his 16th century Spanish namesake is remembered for: snatching all that he could from aboriginal 'Indians' in North America.

The modern-day Peru-born de Soto is known best for his thinktank, Institute for Liberty and Democracy, and the global influence it has gained. He is also known for the clarity of his driving force as an economist. "I do not view capitalism as a credo," de Soto is on record with, "Much more important to me are freedom, compassion for the poor, respect for the social contract, and equal opportunity. But for the moment, to achieve those goals, capitalism is the only game in town."

That the man is also on the hit list of Peru's Shining Path, a bunch of ideological extremists, is a tribute to his success in telling the country's marginalised that their 'class struggle' is not going to get them anywhere, and their best hope is a struggle against government intrusion into their legitimate pursuit of livelihoods.

The explanation is best provided in The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, his book published in 2000, it argues that poor countries lack the infrastructure of asset management that's taken for granted in rich countries. "One main reason why the informal sector has not become formal is that from Indonesia to Brazil, 90 per cent of the informal lands are not titled and registered. This is a generalised phenomenon in the so-called Third World."

What poor countries need to do is establish and enforce laws that turn 'dead assets' into 'liquid capital'. People often own such things as land, but have no access to credit. In the absence of any legal ownership title to their property, they cannot even mortgage it, for instance, to raise funds for a business-let alone gain any other form of liquidity (such as a fair sale price).

"If you take a walk through the countryside, from Indonesia to Peru, and you walk by field after field-in each field a different dog is going to bark at you. Even dogs know what private property is all about," de Soto once quipped in an interview, "The only one who does not know it is the government." Needless to say, his views are controversial.