Destructive Entrepreneurship: The Cost of the Mafia for the Legal Economy

This article focuses on the infiltration of legitimate businesses by the mafia and on the existence of “legal mafia-owned enterprises” (i.e., legal, declared enterprises owned — directly or indirectly — by mafiosi). Crime economics often limits itself to the destructive aspects stemming from merely illegal activities. Mafia investments in the legal economy and mafia entrepreneurship are also an underestimated source of latent conflict that is costly to the economy and society. This article shows that mafia-owned legal enterprises establish a lasting, unproductive, and even destructive entrepreneurship. The mafia strives to create an artificial scarcity that affects only its non-members, and thus the mafia manages to dominate markets and other entrepreneurs. The mafia then turns from its initial appropriative functions into a rule-producing function in order to shape markets. More specifically, the mafia asserts itself as a competing sovereign thanks to its power to withhold resources obtained through property over productive entities.     

Environmental aspects of water price formation. An empirical investigation of the cost of ground water protection

This paper tries to develop a scarcity price for groundwater resources in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The present legal framework in the FRG is based on quantity regulation. This framework, as well as the quantitative structure of demand and supply, is analysed. In the absence of market values, a model calculation for water protection is carried out to estimate the scarcity price of water. According to this model calculation, the average water price should be twice as high as it is. The implications of such a price development for the demand side are being analysed.     

PUBLIC PROTECTION OR PRIVATE EXTORTION?

We analyze the strategic interaction between a firm, an extortionary mafia, and a potentially corrupt government. The model identifies several results. First, government spending is not monotonic in revenues. Second, although the firm wants the government to challenge the mafia (it uses the threat of electoral sanctions to induce the government to do so), in equilibrium, the firm does not directly appeal to the government for protection even though it is extorted. The more likely the government is to uncover mafia extortion independent of an appeal from the firm, the more effective the firm's threat of electoral sanction is at motivating the government to invest in law enforcement. This is because the electoral threat to punish failure on the government's part is only a compelling reason to invest in law enforcement when the government actually expects to confront the mafia. This same logic also implies that the relationship between mafia strength and government corruption is somewhat counterintuitive. When the mafia is strong in equilibrium (i.e. pervasive and extorting large fees), the government is not very corrupt. When the mafia is weak, the government is highly corrupt. Finally, an extension shows that if the mafia and government can collude, then the harsher the threatened sanctions against the mafia, the less likely the government is to challenge the mafia because the mafia is more willing to bribe the government.     

节能减排——基于市场与政府的双重作用

我国节能减排形势非常严峻,当前急需构建基于市场和政府的节能减排的制度安排。市场制度方面,首先,要理顺资源的价格形成机制,建立反映稀缺资源的价格体系;其次,要逐步培育统一的环境能源交易市场。政府的作用主要表现在政策、监管和法律法规方面。由于我国正处于经济转型时期,市场机制仍不健全,能源市场化程度还很低,当前及今后一段时期内,节能减排需要政府的强有力的推动。     

Organized crime and electoral outcomes. Evidence from Sicily at the turn of the XXI century

This paper investigates the relationship between Sicilian mafia and politics by focusing on municipality-level results of national political elections. It exploits the fact that in the early 1990s the Italian party system collapsed, new parties emerged and mafia families had to look for new political allies. It presents evidence, based on disaggregated data from the Italian region of Sicily, that between 1994 and 2013 Silvio Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia, obtained higher vote shares at national elections in municipalities plagued by mafia. The result is robust to the use of different measures of mafia presence, both contemporary and historical, to the inclusion of different sets of controls and to spatial analysis. Instrumenting mafia presence by determinants of its early diffusion in the late XIX century suggests that the correlation reflects a causal link.     

Is Russian Energy Policy towards the EU Only about Geopolitics? The Case of the Third Liberalisation Package

Russian external energy policy is frequently described as geopolitical (as opposed to EU energy policy, which is often characterised as market-based). This article reviews geopolitical and market approaches in existing studies and identifies paradigmatic and instrumental levels in each of them. It then proceeds to demonstrate that although the geopolitical paradigm dominates in Russia, Russia has also reacted to the EU’s third liberalisation package, using legal and technocratic instruments, which are parts of the market approach. Each set of instruments has its institutional basis in Russia: the President, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Gazprom work in geopolitical ways but with frequent recourse to legal instruments, the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) promotes legal instruments and the Ministry of Energy (ME) is the centre of the technocratic activities, which Gazprom also frequently applies at present. This study therefore provides a more complex picture of Russian external energy policy. Moreover, it reveals a potential opening for a degree of policy convergence between the EU and Russia. In this context it is regrettable that legal and technocratic instruments were compromised as a result of the 2014 worsening in EU-Russian relations.     

Medical Nemesis

In addition to the material market, there is also a positional market in human society. The channel of social mobility — the institutional system that regulates the performance of individuals and groups in the positional market — is a critical dimension of the overall institutional foundation of economic growth because it underpins the incentive structure in the positional market. Understanding the interaction between the incentive structures in the material market and those in the positional market sheds new light upon economic history and some of the on-going "natural experiments" in economic development today. Most importantly, understanding the relationship between the positional market and economic growth makes it clear that states should strive to eliminate institutional discrimination because institutional discrimination is not only morally unjust but also economically costly.     

制度环境对企业R&D投入的影响——基于我国上市公司的经验证据

如何通过外部制度的安排提高企业的技术创新能力,是制度变迁背景下我国企业面临的核心问题。以2004-2007年我国A股上市公司的R&D投入数据为研究样本,通过多元线性回归模型,实证检验了企业R&D投入与制度环境之间的关系。研究结果表明:市场化指数、法制环境指数、融资环境指数和产品市场环境指数与公司R&D投入水平显著正相关。好的外部制度环境可以促进公司加大R&D投入,进而提高技术创新能力。企业持续提高创新优势的源泉应包含较高的市场化程度、良好的法制和融资环境以及公平的产品市场环境。     

CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: PROPERTY CLAIMS IN A DYNAMIC WORLD

Constitutional political economy concerns the legal foundations of the market. One central component of that legal infrastructure relates to property rights over objects and circumstances. The idea of "takings" causes one to focus on the conditions under which regulatory actions call for compensation to those who imagine that their property rights have been taken. A dynamic economy is alleged here to be one in which legal processes must carry the burden of discovering when particular parties have an interest that can be said to constitute a property right requiring compensation. That is, objects and circumstances are not protected because they are "property." Rather, those objects and circumstances that are protected become, by virtue of that protection, "property." The task for the economist is to understand the perverse incentives to flow from a compensation requirement on all instances of institutional change concerning landed property. A further task is to incorporate a dynamic concept of property rights into general equilibrium models of economic systems.     

A market without the 'right' property rights

While Vietnam's reforms provided some of the weakest legal private property rights amongst the transitions countries, cities like Ho Chi Minh City have booming domestic real estate markets. Interestingly, while most properties in 2001 did not have legal title, those on the market did advertise a variety of property rights claims. Employing a hedonic price model to analyse the pattern of prices at which sellers offer properties in Ho Chi Minh City, this study examines how this market values property rights. The findings show that multiple forms of property rights, enforced by highly decentralized state institutions, are operational in this market. Furthermore, legal title itself is not the most valuable form of property right. These findings suggest that the value of property rights emanates from where it is enforced within the particular institutional context of a market.     

A test of the Hotelling rule using old‐growth timber data

Abstract.  The paper tests Hotelling's prediction that scarcity rent for a non‐renewable resource will rise at the rate of discount in a market equilibrium. We perform the test using data for old‐growth timber, a resource that is effectively non‐renewable. In contrast to previous studies, for this resource a measure of scarcity rent is directly observable in the form of stumpage price bids in timber auctions. We construct a model that allows for replanting and captures the institutional framework of the western U.S. timber market. The modified Hotelling rule that we derive is not rejected in several of our specifications.     

Problems of Modern Technology

This essay identifies a contradiction between the flourishing interest in the environmental economics of the classical period and a lack of critical parsing of the works of its leading representatives. Its focus is the work of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. It offers a critical analysis of their contribution to environmental thought and surveys the work of their contemporary devotees. It scrutinizes Smith's contribution to what Karl Polanyi termed the "economistic fallacy," as well as his defenses of class hierarchy, the "growth imperative" and consumerism. It subjects to critical appraisal Malthus's enthusiasm for private property and the market system, and his opposition to market regulation. While Malthus's principal attraction to ecological economists lies in his having allegedly broadened the scope of economics, and in his narrative of scarcity, this article shows that he, in fact, narrowed the scope of the discipline and conceptualized scarcity in a reified and pseudo-scientific way.     

中国劳动力市场结构与 农村剩余劳动力转移

中国劳动力市场的特殊结构对农村剩余劳动力转移有重要影响。本文通过吸收二元制劳动力市场分割理论的基本假设和对制度变量的讨论,建立了中国农村剩余劳动力转移的“二元市场与二元劳动力”模型,并用以解释中国农村剩余劳动力转移的特点。本文认为,政府的强制性制度障碍导致“S型的人力资本投资曲线”的产生,从而使城市居民在主要劳动力市场具有政策和人力资本优势;作为对福利制度缺失的替代,“隐形补贴”等诱致性制度创新导致农村剩余劳动力在次要劳动力市场具有成本优势。这一模型对于我国农村剩余劳动力迁移中的特殊现象有较好的解释力,对于我国城市化战略和我国一元劳动力市场的形成有重要的理论意义。     

The Pattern of IMF Lending: An Analysis of Prediction Failures

In a constantly changing economic environment, a country's ability to undertake institutional reforms is crucial to maintain economic growth and to promote the welfare of its citizens. A wide range of determinants for institutional reforms have been identified. However, the impact of trust on reforms has not been fully addressed. We provide theoretical arguments why trust should influence institutional changes and test the relationship empirically. We find a significant positive relation between trust and the success of reforms with regard to government size, the legal system, and deregulation of private businesses and the labor market. Other policy fields are ambiguous.     

英国证券法律与监管体制分析及借鉴——兼谈对我国证券监管的启示

英国作为证券市场最发达的国家之一,其证券市场历史悠久,证券法律制度十分齐备,证券监管体制相对成熟。英国的证券法律和监管体制,对我国证券法律体系的构建及证券监管体制的完善将有重要的借鉴意义。     

中国经济市场化过程及制度演进研究评述

1978年以来,中国从计划经济体制逐步向市场经济体制转轨,进行了全方位的市场化改革。国内外有大量文献针对这一重大的制度变革开展深入的探讨和分析。值得注意的是,这里讨论的"市场化"是不存在意识形态差别的,而是针对"管制"而言的相对概念;中国的市场化是一个制度变迁、创新的过程;这一过程对于经济增长有着积极的影响和作用。     

Evidence of the Endowment Effect in Stock Market Order Placement

The psychological endowment effect is apparent when investors place greater value on something when they mentally "own" it than when someone else owns it. Although this effect is well established in laboratory studies, there is relatively little documented evidence of an endowment bias in actual trading. This study examines order placements of stock traders on the Australian Stock Exchange. Consistent with the endowment effect, sellers appear to value their own shares higher than buyers independent of current market price, by consistently placing sell orders on average "further from the market" (i.e., from the best quote) than buy orders. This asymmetry is more pronounced in private client trading than in orders made through institutional brokers, suggesting that more sophisticated investors are less affected by asset ownership than the private clients of retail brokers. Since private "day traders" have been able to trade online themselves rather than through a broker, the quote asymmetry relative to the best-standing quotes between asks and bids has become more pronounced. Over the same period, the relatively small asymmetry apparent in institutional quotes has remained unchanged.     

国有机构投资者持股能提升企业投资效率吗?

具有国资背景的机构投资者,对于资本市场平稳发展具有重要意义。本文基于我国2015—2019年A股上市公司样本,考察持股对企业投资效率的影响。研究发现,持股显著提升了企业投资效率,并且该影响在代理冲突更严重和所处信息环境更不透明的公司中更加显著。机制检验表明,降低企业内外部信息不对称和代理成本是持股提升企业投资效率的重要渠道。进一步研究发现,国有机构投资者持股时间越长,对企业非效率投资的治理效果越好;细分国有机构投资者类型后发现,致力于长期维护资本市场稳定和上市公司长期健康发展的证金公司和汇金公司对企业投资效率的提升作用显著,但没有发现“救市”基金和外管局旗下的投资平台对企业投资效率有提升作用。研究结论从企业投资效率视角为国有机构投资者持股在微观企业日常经营中发挥的治理作用提供了新颖的经验证据,对进一步提高我国上市公司质量具有启示意义。     

论“互联网+”商业模式专利保护的制度设计

“互联网+”商业模式日益成为我国市场经济发展的强劲发动机，有必要对其进行保护，而专利保护应作为主要方式。目前相关法律保护制度无法充分覆盖商业模式保护，需要重新进行制度设计。我国“互联网+”商业模式专利保护的制度设计，应坚持静态与动态相结合的总体观察视角，以利益的冲突、衡量与选择作为核心设计理念。具体而言，应以专利法律为主，配套政策文件为辅，构建商业模式知识创新与利用的整体政策体系；在商业模式专利审查范围扩大的情况下，应当严格专利审查标准，尤其是严格创造性标准的审查；采用特别保护制度进行辅助，比如短期专利制度等特别措施；建立商业模式专利人才体系培养机制，探寻商业模式专利保护的国际合作机制，坚定维护我国国家社会利益，促进经济社会整体发展与繁荣。     

心理学视角的合法性与合法化

合法性对于权威、机构或者制度化组织的成功是至关重要的,因为仅仅依靠对权力的占有和使用而对他人施加影响是十分困难的。在资源匮乏、危机和冲突时期,能够在大多数时间里得到大多数人的自愿服从可以提高组织的有效性。合法性的概念在社会思想和社会心理学领域有着悠久的历史,而最近在关于政治、法律和社会系统的作用机制的研究中,它变得越来越重要。