The emergence of English commercial law: Analysis inspired by the Ottoman experience

Thirteenth-century England was a commercial backwater whose trade was dominated by foreigners. To accommodate and encourage foreign merchants, England modified its legal system by creating legal institutions that were available to both domestic and foreign traders. Among the most important of these institutions were streamlined debt collection procedures and mixed juries composed of both Englishmen and foreigners. By introducing institutions that treated locals and foreigners equally, England created a level playing field that enabled English merchants to become increasingly prominent in the later Middle Ages. England's ability to modernize its law was facilitated by the secular nature of English law, the representation of merchants in Parliament, and legal pluralism. Medieval England contrasts sharply with the early modern Ottoman Empire. The latter created special institutions for foreign merchants, which eventually put Ottoman Muslims at a competitive disadvantage.     

中国传统商人精神的现代性转换

我国正处于传统商人精神向现代商业精神转换的过渡阶段。本文对传统商人与现代企业家进行了深入比较,对中国传统商人精神进行梳理,并探讨了对其进行现代转换的5条途径:从个体的创业垂统到组织的创业垂统;从家族主义到社会责任;从人际诚信到制度诚信;从积累财富到运用财富;从重教好学到组织学习。     

可转债的信号发送功能:中国市场的例子

本文研究了双边市场中的银行卡支付系统,其中的银行卡组织和商户都拥有垄断力量。在未考虑商户竞争的基准模型中,本文证明银行卡组织征收的双边费率与其在双边的固定成本支出和双边所获得的便利程度皆正相关。在拓展模型中,本文采用豪泰林博弈刻画商户之间的竞争,为了争夺市场份额,商户愿意接受的最高费率是其自身的便利和消费者的平均便利之和,这使得银行卡组织可以不向消费者收取刷卡费乃至提供补贴。     

Pirates and traders: Some economics of pirate-infested seas

Even where all agents are risk-neutral, merchants can insure themselves against piracy. Such self-insurance is surprisingly invulnerable to moral hazard. Further, there exist a patrolling intensity and/or penalties for captured pirates which, along with mercantile self-insurance, could eliminate piracy.     

Merchant internalization and tax evasion

Merchant internalization has been used to explain why merchants may accept high fees to accept card payments. However, merchants seem to be more resistant in some economic activities or countries; in particular, when the shadow economy is sizeable. Cash payments are usually associated with tax evasion, and therefore the analysis of card industry should take it in to consideration. This paper explores the role of tax evasion in the merchant internalization condition; first, considering it as exogenous, and then, as a strategic reason.     

THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS IN THE REVIVAL OF TRADE: THE LAW MERCHANT, PRIVATE JUDGES, AND THE CHAMPAGNE FAIRS

A good reputation can be an effective bond for honest behavior in a community of traders if members of the community know how others have behaved in the past – even if any particular pair of traders meets only infrequently. In a large community, it would be impossibly costly for traders to be perfectly informed about each other's behavior, but there exist institutions that can restore the effectiveness of a reputation system using much less extensive information. The system of judges used to enforce commercial law before the rise of the state was such an institution, and it successfully encouraged merchants (1) to behave honestly, (2) to impose sanctions on violators, (3) to become adequately informed about how others had behaved, (4) to provide evidence against violators of the code, and (5) to pay any judgments assessed against them, even though each of these behaviors might be personally costly.     

试析历史地理环境中福建海商的兴衰

在特殊的历史地理环境中，植根于中国传统农业社会的福建商业经济一直不断加强着与海内外的联系。宋元以后随着人口和经济的繁荣，福建的对外贸易更是发展迅猛，随之出现了大量的海商乃至海商集团，成为海洋商业文化发展的重要标志。近代以后，由于国内外政治经济条件的变化，福建海商逐渐步入衰弱，但其海洋人文影响却至今犹存。     

The no-surcharge rule and surcharging behaviours in credit card markets

We investigate the welfare implications of banning the no-surcharge rule (NSR) in credit card markets. In particular, we introduce a governance mechanism alteration and merchants' heterogeneity into the model of Wright (2003). In doing so, we find two market forces exist in the transition of lifting the NSR. The first force is the classical double marginalisation because of merchants being able to deliberately impose a surcharge. The second force arises from a market structure change that merchants, who did not accept credit cards payments, do accept afterwards. Our model shows that the welfare implication hinges on the relative magnitudes of both market forces. More importantly, this article provides an explanation for the surcharging behaviours of merchants in Australia after the removal of the NSR in 2003, which have not been explained in the literature.     

A Theoretical Analysis of Credit Card Reform in Australia

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) moved to reform credit card associations by increasing entry, allowing merchants to surcharge for card payments and regulating the interchange fee. We develop a simple model of payment systems designed to analyse the impact of these reforms. We build on the RBA's main assumptions and provide a justification for some of their concerns about excessive card use. Allowing merchants to surcharge may eliminate much of the concern over the interchange fee. On the other hand, the RBA's proposed interchange fee, based entirely on issuer costs, is unlikely to be socially optimal.     

Pricing in debit and credit card schemes

This paper presents a model of a debit or credit card payment scheme, providing a simple determination of the socially optimal structure of fees between those charged to cardholders and those charged to merchants.     

The Growth and Decline of the Modern Sector and the Merchant Class in Imperial China

This paper offers an explanation of why, in Imperial China, the merchant class expanded and the economy modernized up to the 13th century, and why it entered into decline from the 14th century onward. The modernization of China required the accumulation of public capital and the building of good institutions, upon which a vibrant class of merchants and entrepreneurs could gradually emerge. This class contributed to the enrichment of the society and the emperor, but its activities also weakened the dominance of the emperor and the élite, who would then prefer to block the modernization of China and to restrict the size of the merchant class, putting the economy into long‐run stagnation. However, when the emperor faced severe foreign military threats and when he realized that a modern sector improved the defense capabilities of China, he made the opposite choice.     

Industrial investment in an ‘export’ economy:: The Brazilian experience before 1914

Cotton textile production, the main manufacturing activity in pre-1914 Brazil, is shown to have developed largely in response to stimuli arising from two sources: (a) exchange rate instability, which impelled cloth merchants to the production side of the business: this can be seen as a risk-averting diversification of investment: (b) an increasingly protective tariff system, which enabled the manufacturing undertakings to survive and grow even under adverse exchange-rate conditions. Those findings challege the view that early Brazilian industrialization was not the object of deliberate government policies, and suggest that the analysis of exchange rate policies may be relevant to the understanding of the industrialization process in export economies.     

MEASURING SOME EFFECTS OF THE 2011 DEBIT CARD INTERCHANGE FEE REFORM

In October 2011, new rules governing debit card interchange fees became effective in the United States. These rules limit the maximum permissible interchange fee that an issuer can charge merchants for a debit card transaction. Using new data from the Federal Reserve of Boston, Richmond, and San Francisco 2012 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, this article provides simple calculations that identify the transaction values by consumer expenditure category for which interchange fees became higher and lower under the new rules. (JEL G28)     

On the socially optimal density of coin and banknote series: Do production costs really matter?

By adding denominations to their coin and banknote series central banks can increase the efficiency of cash payments. In practice, however, they opt for a denominational structure with a relatively low density. The literature holds that this is because of the production costs involved. To test this proposition, we introduce a per-denomination fixed cost into the matching model of Lee et al. (2005) and parameterize the model with data on the production of US dollar banknotes. Our simulations demonstrate that central banks could increase the density of their currency systems beyond the observed level without the efficiency gains for transactors being dwarfed by the additional production costs for the central bank itself. This suggests that the explanation for the low density rather lies with costs incurred by consumers and merchants - and anticipated by central banks - that are not yet in any of the extant models.     

The Law and Bioeconomics of Ethnic Cooperation and Conflict in Plural Societies of Southeast Asia: a Theory of Chinese Merchant Success

Overseas Chinese dominate merchant roles in the economies of Southeast Asia. Chinese merchant success has generated envy and hatred by indigenous populations, resulting in episodes of racial violence toward the Chinese. In order to understand the economic basis of inter-ethnic conflict and violence, it is necessary to understand the economic basis of success of Chinese merchants in Southeast Asia. The paper presents an economic theory of Chinese middleman success. Central to the theory is the idea that the Confucian code of ethics which emphasize the importance of mutual aid/reciprocity among kinsmen, fellow-villagers and those speaking the same dialect, enabled the Chinese to cooperate among members of their own dialect group to form a club-like ethnically homogeneous middleman group (EHMG) for the provision of infrastructure, essential for middleman entrepreneurship. Chinese merchants embedded in the EHMG were able to economize on transaction costs, and this gave them a differential advantage to out-compete other ethnic groups to appropriate merchant roles. The EHMG functions also as a 'cultural transmission unit' transmitting Confucian ethics to future generations of Chinese middlemen, hence maintaining Chinese merchant roles over time. The paper draws on some key concepts in the New Institutional Economics literature as well as modern evolutionary biology.     

汪道昆散文中的徽文化特质

汪道昆是明代中后期与王世贞、李攀龙鼎足而三的文坛领袖人物。汪道昆本人来自徽州、出身徽商家庭,深受徽文化影响。徽商的经商生活及徽商的商业伦理道德、徽州人"聚族而居"的特点、新安理学思想的影响等在汪道昆的散文里得到鲜明地体现。独特的地域文化造就了汪道昆,同时又使得汪道昆的散文打上了深深的地域文化烙印。     

明清徽州传统社会救助研究

明清时期,徽州水旱蝗疫等自然灾害频发,使传统徽州社会宗族内外产生了众多贫民。为济贫饥民于倒悬,徽州官府、宗族、绅商各界采取了灾前预筹与灾时救助相结合,形成了参与社会救助的资助者多,受众广,救助措施全的较为完整的社会救助体系,促进了传统徽州社会的稳定和正常持续的惯性发展。     

徽商文化对高职生职业素养培育的价值和途径探究

徽商文化深受儒家文化的影响,对后世影响深远,尤其对当代青年学生具有十分重要的教育意义。文章探讨了徽商文化与儒家文化的关系,从商业道德、处事哲学两方面对徽商文化内涵进行了分析,阐述了徽商文化对高职学生职业素养培育的意义,并提出了以徽商文化精神培育学生素养的有效途径。     

Optimal card payment systems

This paper presents a model of a card payment system to address the pricing and rules that govern such systems. It evaluates the social optimality of privately set interchange fees and the adoption of a rule by payment systems to prevent merchants surcharging for card transactions using two extremes of merchant pricing—monopolistic pricing and perfect competition. Both types of merchant pricing constrain the ability of card schemes to use interchange fees and the no-surcharge rule in anticompetitive ways, although for quite different reasons. The positive role of the no-surcharge rule in preventing excessive merchant surcharging is also highlighted.     

CLUSTER‐BASED INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT: A VIEW FROM EAST ASIA*

In this paper I attempt to formulate an endogenous model of cluster‐based industrial development, based on case studies in Japan, Taiwan, and China, where the initiation phase is followed by the quantity expansion phase through imitation and subsequently by the quality improvement phase through innovation. I argue that such a process of industrial development is supported by the development of market transactions among assemblers, parts‐suppliers, and merchants, and the stimulation of innovation made possible by the benefits of industrial clusters arising from the geographical concentration of a large number of enterprises and a variety of human resources in a small geographical area.