Brian Hooks, director of the Global Prosperity Initiative at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, advocates the kind of legal reform and changes in property rights pioneered by Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto--reforms that will eventually enable the world's poor to join formal financial systems.
De Soto makes the point that if you look at squatters and shantytowns surrounding numerous Third World cities, you will find the people who live there have created rules about property.