The Law of Primogeniture and the Transition from Landed Aristocracy to Industrial Democracy

We study the connection between inheritance systems and the historical evolution of the relationship between a society’s economic structure and its political system, with a focus on Europe from feudal times. The model predicts that, in an early agrarian phase, aristocratic political systems prevail, while democracies tend to emerge with industrialization. At the same time, as indivisible landed estates are replaced by capital as the primary source of wealth, the inheritance system evolves endogenously from primogeniture to partition. The dynamics of output, distribution, class structure and political participation are in turn reinforced by the system of intergenerational wealth transmission, with primogeniture tending to concentration and partition to equalization. “But the law of inheritance was the last step to equality.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835).     

环境史视野下中世纪日耳曼人的食物构成研究

从大量的历史文献和考古发现中不难发现，中世纪日耳曼人的食物构成虽较为丰富，但还远没有达到新大陆发现之后的多样化程度。食物构成之所以相对单一，主要是当时各地区自然条件的悬殊差异和农业生产技术的不发达所致。随着中世纪中期城市、手工业和商业的不断兴起，地区间的商品交换成为可能，这在一定程度上改变了日耳曼人的食物构成，但这还谈不上根本性改变，真正的改变是在新时代开启后。从环境史视角对中世纪日耳曼人的食物构成进行研究，不但可以了解到他们的生存状况以及他们和周边环境的相处关系，还可以为德国生态文明史的研究提供一个新的视野。     

温州市土地利用空间格局研究

本文运用多种数学模型对温州市及县（市,区）的土地利用的空间格局进行定量分析,找出了各地区的土地利用存在的差异,这种差异与其所处的地理位置,地形地貌,经济水平及历史文化等密切相关,因此,在土地利用方面,对经济发达的平原地区,应防止农业用地的流失,对经济欠发达的山区,应努力提高林业的多种效益。     

The concept of “lawfulness” in economic matters. Reading Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

Abstract

In the Middle Ages the major concept through which economic matters are analysed and evaluated is the “lawful”, in Arabic jâ’iz, concept. It claims to establish whether a gain, a profit, a contract is lawful or not: that is the main question theologians examine when they are addressing the issue of appreciating any economic fact. In our study, we analyse the criteria of the “lawfulness” as found in the economic parts of Ibn Rushd's work entitled Bidâyat al-mujtahid wa nihâyat al-muqta?id (English translation: The Distinguished Jurist's Primer). Our thesis is inspired essentially by Raymond De Roover's studies on the economic thought in the Middle Ages. De Roover shows that the criteria for lawfulness are to be found in the nature of the contract between partners: a gain is lawful if the contract which generates it is lawful. Our study essentially consists in a text analysis.     

湖南传统特产的非物质文化遗产与地理标志保护对策

湖南省历史悠久,是湘文化的发祥地,非物质文化遗产资源十分丰富,现有70项国家级非物质文化遗产。该省有丰富的传统特产资源,现有27种国家地理标志产品、39件国家地理标志商标、24种国家农产品地理标志,原有2种国家原产地标记。在介绍该省非物质文化遗产名录与地理标志特产的概况的基础上,探讨传统特产的地理标志与非物质文化遗产双重保护发展对策,并提出几点具体建议。     

Property rights imperfections and asset allocation: Co-ownership in Bulgaria

This paper analyzes how imperfections of property rights affect households’ allocation of assets using micro-survey data from Bulgaria. Co-ownership of assets is widespread in many countries due to inheritance. Central and Eastern Europe offers an interesting natural experiment to assess the effects of this type of property rights imperfection because of the asset restitution process in the 1990s. In Bulgaria, where co-ownership is very prominent and land is strongly fragmented, the land reform and inheritance legislation allows identifying the impact of co-ownership by taking advantage of a discontinuity created by a minimum plot size law. We find that land in co-ownership is more likely to be used by less efficient farm organizations or to be left abandoned, and that it is related to significant welfare losses. The paper hence provides evidence of sub-optimal land allocation following a privatization that established formal but imperfect property rights.     

Trade and Endogenous Formation of Regions in a Developing Country

The authors present a model of regional catching‐up and development without scale effects. Regional growth is driven by technological imitation which is determined by positive externalities from international trade, the regions’ geography, and regional institutions. For the two regions considered, factor endowments are immobile land and human capital which is perfectly mobile between the two regions. Endogenous formation of regions is analyzed by introducing a non‐symmetric decrease in international transaction costs, reflecting the different geography and institutions in the two regions. Using panel data from 354 South African magisterial districts over the period 1996 to 2000, we find that geography is important in explaining trade patterns. As predicted, regions that are larger in terms of economic size, with good foreign market access and know‐how of foreign markets, competitive transport costs and a good local institutional support framework will be more successful in exporting manufactured goods than other regions.     

The Nature of Property Rights in Haiti: Mode of Land Acquisition,Gender, and Investment

In Haiti, two primary pathways to land ownership are through the purchase of land and through inheritance. In terms of inheritance, intestate law treats daughters and sons equally with respect to real property. Despite the formal law, we find that women are relatively less tenure secure on their inherited land than men. In contrast, men and women share similar perceptions of tenure security on purchased land. These differences become manifest in conservation investment activities: tree planting, fallowing, and terracing. We find evidence that these activities are less likely to occur by female respondents on their inherited land.     

Intergenerational transfers in Philippine rice villages. Gender differences in traditional inheritance customs

The author presents findings from a study of education, land, and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in 344 households in five rice villages in the Philippines. A model with family fixed effects is developed which explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects. Analysis revealed that families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children. In a subsample with completed inheritance, daughters receive less education, land, and total inheritance, but are compensated with nonland assets. Parents also exhibit preferential behavior toward children of the same gender such that daughters of better educated mothers receive more land, nonland assets, and total inheritance. Better educated fathers, however, give land preferentially to sons, but favor daughters in education.     

Accounting for Spatial Effects in Economic Models of Land Use: Recent Developments and Challenges Ahead

The marked increase in the availability of spatial data has forced researchers engaged in land use modeling to directly confront the question of space and the theoretical and methodological challenges involved in developing spatial models. Advances have come from multiple disciplines, most notably through the development and application of spatial theory and methods from regional science, geography, urban economics and more recently, theoretical and applied econometrics. The main goal of this paper is to summarize the econometric challenges of spatial data and to highlight spatial models and methods with a particular focus on models of land markets and land use change. We also discuss the data and modeling challenges associated with modeling the underlying spatial economic mechanisms that give rise to land use patterns and the complexities involved in modeling land use as a coupled economic-ecological system.     

Patience and prosperity

This paper introduces wealth-dependent time preference into a simple model of endogenous growth. The model generates adjustment dynamics in line with the historical facts on savings and economic growth in Europe from the High Middle Ages to today. Along a virtuous cycle of development more wealth leads to more patience, which leads to more savings and further increasing wealth. Savings rates and income growth rates are thus jointly increasing during the process of development until they converge towards constants along a balanced growth path. During the transition to modern growth an economy in which the association of wealth and patience is stronger overtakes an otherwise identical economy and generates temporarily diverging growth rates.     

The farm, the city, and the emergence of social security

We study the social, demographic and economic origins of social security. The data for the U.S. and for a cross section of countries suggest that urbanization and industrialization are associated with the rise of social insurance. We describe an OLG model in which demographics, technology, and social security are linked together in a political economy equilibrium. In the model economy, there are two locations (sectors), the farm (agricultural) and the city (industrial) and the decision to migrate from rural to urban locations is endogenous and linked to productivity differences between the two locations and survival probabilities. Farmers rely on land inheritance for their old age and do not support a pay-as-you-go social security system. With structural change, people migrate to the city, the land loses its importance and support for social security arises. We show that a calibrated version of this economy, where social security taxes are determined by majority voting, is consistent with the historical transformation in the United States.     

Gendered Paths to Asset Accumulation? Markets,Savings, and Credit in Developing Countries

An extensive literature shows how property inheritance is biased against women in many developing countries, yet relatively little attention has been given to gender bias in other means of acquiring physical assets, such as the market. Using individual-level data from Ecuador, Ghana, and Karnataka, India, this study analyzes modes of acquisition and financing of housing, agricultural land, other real estate, and businesses. The findings show that women acquire fewer of their assets through the market than men, and that in asset markets, both men and women are more likely to use their own savings than to use credit. The study also analyzes current loans for asset acquisition and finds that, in general, women tend to be somewhat disadvantaged in securing formal bank loans. The results suggest that financial inclusion to promote more gender equal access to accumulation of assets should focus on both savings and credit, with priority to savings.     

中国的地区工业集聚:经济地理、新经济地理与经济政策

本文使用新经济地理学的分析框架讨论了经济地理和经济政策等因素对工业集聚的影响,并利用1987—2001年省级面板数据研究了导致中国地区工业集聚的因素。我们的主要发现是(1)经济开放促进了工业集聚,而经济开放又与地理和历史的因素有关;(2)市场容量、城市化、基础设施的改善和政府作用的弱化也有利于工业集聚;(3)沿海地区具有工业集聚的地理优势。我们的研究为新经济地理学的理论提供了来自于中国的证据,同时也发现,除了经济地理的作用以外,政策也是导致工业集聚的重要因素。     

The probability of nontrivial common knowledge

We study the probability that two or more agents can attain common knowledge of nontrivial events when the size of the state space grows large. We adopt the standard epistemic model where the knowledge of an agent is represented by a partition of the state space. Each agent is endowed with a partition generated by a random scheme consistent with his cognitive capacity. Assuming that agentsʼ partitions are independently distributed, we prove that the asymptotic probability of nontrivial common knowledge undergoes a phase transition. Regardless of the number of agents, when their cognitive capacity is sufficiently large, the probability goes to one; and when it is small, it goes to zero. Our proofs rely on a graph-theoretic characterization of common knowledge that has independent interest.     

Land,men and taxation: an application to pre-modern China and Europe Erik Jones’ European Miracle revisited

Eric Jones has found that excessive taxes were detrimental for pre-modern China’s economic growth whereas moderate taxes were conducive for Europe’s economic growth. This paper provides a political-economic answer to the question why these two tax systems came about. Taxation is only feasible when men and land can be linked as a single bundle. Taxation of land is not feasible without men, and taxation of men is not feasible without land. A tax maximizing bureaucrat has to combine the two variables in such a way that tax revenues are maximized given the constraints of land and men in his country. China’s contiguous geography allows bureaucrats to establish an autocratic tax system whereas Europe’s split geography enforces a competitive tax system. Therefore often contiguous states reveal to be stable states whereas split states turn out to be unstable and prone to collapse.     

Predicting land use allocation in France: A spatial panel data analysis

Predictions of future land use areas are an important issue as land use patterns significantly impact environmental conditions (biodiversity, water pollution, soil erosion, and climate change) as well as economic and social welfare. In order to improve the prediction accuracy of aggregated land use share models, we propose in this paper a methodological contribution by controlling for both unobserved individual heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation. Our model is a land use shares model applied to aggregated data in France. Our dataset is a panel which covers both time series observations from 1992 to 2003 and cross-sectional observations by Département (equivalent to NUTS3 regions). We consider four land use classes: (1) agriculture, (2) forest, (3) urban and (4) other use. We investigate the relation between the areas in land in different alternative uses and economic and demographic factors influencing land use decisions. Based on the comparison of prediction accuracy of different model specifications, our findings are threefold: First, controlling for both unobserved individual heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation outperforms any other specification in which spatial autocorrelation and/or individual heterogeneity are ignored. Second, accounting for cross-equation correlations does not seem to improve the prediction performances and finally, ignoring individual heterogeneity introduces substantial loss in prediction accuracy.     

基于GIS的济南市城市土地利用空间结构分析

利用1996年和2000年两个时相的航空影像进行城市土地利用解译，通过MapInfo、ArcView等GIS软件对矢量化的解译成果进行空间分析与查询统计。研究表明：济南市城市土地利用结构具有明显的圈层和扇形结构特征。自内而外可分为三个圈层，但与西方圈层模式相比，又具有鲜明的特点。内圈层功能以居住和商业金融服务为主，且居住用地比重偏大；中间圈层土地利用的空间结构比较均衡，随时间变化较平稳；外层土地利用的时空变化明显，工业用地比重较大。各圈层又可划分为多个具有不同城市功能的扇形地域。     

The impacts of women's land ownership: Evidence from Vietnam

Women's equal access to and control over economic resources such as land are integral to achieve gender equality and sustainable economic development. This study evaluates the impacts of women's land ownership on various women's and household's outcomes in the context of Vietnam. We discuss the beneficial effects of allowing women to own more land on both women and their families. In particular, there is a positive association between women's land ownership and intra-household bargaining power in various aspects. In particular, the relationship is the strongest for women's autonomy in decisions regarding their children. It is also easier for land-holding women to formally access credit and invest in human capital. We further study the favorable effects of women's land ownership on their families in terms of spending and saving behaviors. Finally, women's land ownership also contributes to household social capital. These findings lend support to the passage and implementation of laws intended to grant women equal rights to the ownership and control over land.     

在高中地理教学中提高学生的环保意识

中国是人口大国,长期以来对环境教育重视不够,人口的环境意识相当薄弱,近年来,随着中国经济建设的发展环境问题也日趋严重,要从根本上改变中国的环境状况,实现可持续发展,应在地理教学中要充分发挥地理学科优势,挖掘教材内容,结合环保事例和乡土地理增长学生的环境科学知识;结合实际,开展丰富多彩的活动,增强学生的环境保护意识,这也是中国新一轮课程改革所希望能够实现的愿望。