Property Rights,Public Enforcement,and Growth

We study the link between public enforcement of property rights, innovation investments, and economic growth in an endogenous growth framework with an expanding set of product varieties. We find that a government can assure positive equilibrium growth through public employment in the enforcement of property rights, if the economic environment is sufficiently favorable to growth and/or if public enforcement is sufficiently effective. However, in terms of welfare, an equilibrium path without property‐rights protection and growth might be preferable. In this case, the enforcement of property rights involves too much reallocation of labor from production and research towards the public sector.     

经济制度安排、国际贸易与经济增长影响机理的经验研究

本文分析了经济制度安排和贸易流量之间的相互关系及其对该国经济增长以及影响经济增长的其他因素的影响。在九个经济制度安排变量中对一国贸易流量影响作用最大的经济制度安排变量是该国的贸易政策,对一国高技术产品出口影响最大的经济制度安排变量是该国的产权保护程度。从对影响经济增长的渠道分析发现,在所有的经济制度安排变量中,一国产权的保护程度对该国经济增长的影响作用最大;同时产权保护的程度和政府干预对技术进步和人力资本的影响最为显著。     

Effective property rights, conflict and growth

This paper shows how the interaction between conflict and growth can give rise to a nonmonotone relationship between property rights and social welfare. This interaction is illustrated in a model of endogenous growth in which equilibrium diversion of resources is the cost of securing effective property rights. A symmetric equilibrium allocation associated with more secure property rights and faster growth can be Pareto dominated by one associated with poorer property rights and slower growth. Faster growth can exacerbate the problem of diversion whenever property rights are sufficiently poor. These results call for caution before a society decides to pursue economic growth independently of the institutional structure of property rights. Furthermore, if this structure is inappropriate piecemeal reform might not be in the interest of society, and a substantial reform might be necessary if it is to be welfare-improving.     

Endogenous strength of intellectual property rights: Implications for economic development and growth

The key institution that determines sustained growth in R&D-based growth models is the strength of intellectual property rights, which are usually assumed to be exogenous. In this paper we endogenize the strength of the intellectual property rights and show how private incentives to protect these rights affect economic development and growth. Our model explains endogenous differences in intellectual property rights across countries as private incentives to invest in property rights generate multiple equilibria. We show that the resulting institutional threshold offers an explanation for why the effect of a transfer of institutions from one country to another depends on the quality of the institutions that were imported.     

INSTITUTIONS AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: CROSS-COUNTRY TESTS USING ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONAL MEASURES

The impact of property rights on economic growth is examined using indicators provided by country risk evaluators to potential foreign investors. Indicators include evaluations of contract enforceability and risk of expropriation. Using these variables, property rights are found to have a greater impact on investment and growth than has previously been found for proxies such as the Gastil indices of liberties, and frequencies of revolutions, coups and political assassinations. Rates of convergence to U.S.-level incomes increase notably when these property rights variables are included in growth regressions. These results are robust to the inclusion of measures of factor accumulation and of economic policy.     

试论产权激励的两个层面

现代产权激励分为两个层面,一个是微观层面,另一个是宏观层面.西方产权理论侧重于微观与效率分析,却无法解释经济增长和政府职能在宏观层面上对产权激励的影响.中国在经历了30年改革之后,社会的进一步转型需要剖析政府在宏观层面上的产权激励.     

From Predation to Accumulation?: The Second Transition Decade in Russia

In this paper I argue that the insecure property rights and widespread predation that have characterized Russia during these past 12 or so years have depressed capital formation in all its dimensions, private, public, physical, human and environmental. The elimination of the conditions that gave rise to insecure property rights and predation is a necessary condition for the kind of sustained economic growth the Russian government anticipates in its new economic strategy, promulgated in June 2000.     

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

This paper studies the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and economic growth for a cross-section of countries for the period 1960–1990. The analysis focuses on effects of IPRs on growth using a quantitative index of IPRs. The paper finds that IPRs affect economic growth indirectly by stimulating the accumulation of factor inputs like R&D and physical capital. The positive effects of IPRs on factor accumulation, particularly of R&D capital, are present even when the analysis controls for a more general measure of property rights     

论环境资源产权制度功能

环境资源产权制度功能是环境资源产权制度对整个经济关系和经济运行的作用,是环境资源产权制度内在的并与环境资源产权制度的内在属性相联系,适当的环境资源产权制度安排可以更为充分地发挥其内在功能。环境资源产权制度的功能主要包括:有效的环境资源产权制度可以促进环境资源合理定价和有效配置、激励环境治理技术创新、促进经济持续有效增长和收入合理分配。     

Property Rights, Renewable Resources and Economic Development

This paper analyzes the role of endogenous property rights in the development of an open resource-based economy. I incorporate renewable resources and endogenous decisions on property rights into a convex growth model with the formal and informal sectors. I find that along the transition path to steady state, property rights enforcement is not constant but improves with time as well as involves intermediate property rights specification (between open access and perfect property rights). International trade and labor market are driving these endogenous changes. Property rights improve with favorable terms of trade when the economy exports resource services and stronger property rights help maintain the resource stock by deterring illegal harvest. This pushes labor away from the informal harvest sector toward greater participation in the formal sector of the economy. In turn, more labor participation in the formal sector along with capital formation increase the country’s output and consumption. Overall, with an open economy and well-functioning institutions, renewable resources have a positive impact on economic growth.     

Women’s rights and development

Why has the expansion of women’s economic and political rights coincided with economic development? This paper investigates this question by focusing on a key economic right for women: property rights. The basic hypothesis is that the process of development (i.e., capital accumulation and declining fertility) exacerbated the tension in men’s conflicting interests as husbands versus fathers, ultimately resolving them in favor of the latter. As husbands, men stood to gain from their privileged position in a patriarchal world whereas, as fathers, they were hurt by a system that afforded few rights to their daughters. The model predicts that declining fertility would hasten reform of women’s property rights whereas legal systems that were initially more favorable to women would delay them. The theoretical relationship between capital and the relative attractiveness of reform is non-monotonic but growth inevitably leads to reform. I explore the empirical validity of the theoretical predictions by using cross-state variation in the US in the timing of married women obtaining property and earning rights between 1850 and 1920.     

Economic growth,financial crisis,and property rights: observer bias in perception-based measures

Recent years have seen an increasing number of empirical papers using subjective indicators in cross-country quantitative analyses of growth. We evaluate potential observer biases in the three most commonly employed subjective measures of property rights – taken from the Heritage Foundation, Fraser Institute, and World Economic Forum. Drawing on cross-national data for 156 countries during the years 2000 – 2010, we use Granger causality tests to assess whether exposure to recent information on economic performance introduces bias to coding of property rights scores. Further, we evaluate whether the Great Recession led observers to change property rights scores in advanced nations. We find consistent evidence that observers who provide subjective coding of property rights scores rated nations more positively when their economic performance was positive, and more negatively during the recent global financial crisis. Taken together, our findings suggest that coding of commonly employed property rights measures are subject to substantial observer bias.     

Property Rights,Governance, and Economic Development

In this review article we give an intuitive account of why good institutions in general, and secure property rights in particular, matter for economic growth and development. We also discuss implications for good governance, defined as the efficient provision of property rights and other aspects of governance. Finally, we briefly touch on political institutions that might be conducive to good governance and thus economic development.     

Enforcement of Property Rights and Underdevelopment

The authors formalize the role of legal infrastructure in economic development in a general‐equilibrium model with endogenously determined property rights enforcement. The mutual importance of property rights protection and market production is illustrated by the model's multiplicity of equilibria. In one equilibrium, property rights are enforced, and market activity unhampered. In the other, property rights are not enforced, discouraging economic activity, which leaves the economy without the resources and the incentives to enforce property rights. Even identically endowed economies may therefore find themselves in very different equilibria.     

When should market-supporting institutions be established?

Market-supporting institutions play an essential role in successfulmarket economies, yet much remains unanswered about when inthe course of economic development those institutions shouldbe established. This article develops a model that shows howprivate sector growth can depend on the time at which a countryestablishes institutions belonging to a specific category: thosethat have the potential not only to enhance efficiency, butto threaten private property rights by facilitating income redistribution(e.g., agencies to enforce regulations and tax laws). If a countryhas no difficulty committing to secure property rights, it isefficient to establish potentially efficiency-enhancing institutionsas soon as possible. In the presence of commitment problems,however, eventually desirable institutions (even those essentialfor economic growth) can derail growth if established prematurely.Restricting voting rights may have positive or negative effectson growth, and there exist potential complementarities betweendemocracy and efficiency-enhancing institutions.     

转轨体制、租金机制与企业的性质——兼论中国转型经济增长的“微观基础”

本文引入"潜产权"概念和租金机制来构造转型经济增长的"微观基础"。笔者从体制转轨和法律缺失两个转型背景下发现"潜产权"普遍存在,这些"潜产权"介入企业,从而改变了企业的性质。随后,通过企业这个微观主体,本文揭示了转轨体制对经济发生作用的内在逻辑,为"透视"转型期中国经济的三大"异常"特征提供了一个统一的理论解释。     

Capital markets and capital allocation: Implications for economies in transition*

Recent work showing that a sounder financial system is associated with faster economic growth has important implications for transition economies. Stock prices in developed economies move in highly firm‐specific ways that convey information about changes in firms’ marginal value of investment. This information facilitates the rapid flow of capital to its highest value uses. In contrast, stock prices in low‐income countries tend to move up and down en masse, and thus are of scant use for microeconomic capital allocation. Some transition economy markets are coming to resemble those of developed economies, others those of low‐income countries. Stock return asynchronicity is highly correlated with the strength of private property rights in general and public shareholders’ rights in particular. Other recent work suggests that small entrenched elites in low‐income countries preserve their sweeping control over the corporate sectors of their economies by using political influence to undermine the financial system and deprive entrants of capital. The lack of cross‐sectional independence in some transition economies’ stock returns may be a warning of such economic entrenchment. Sound property rights, solid shareholder rights, stock market transparency, and capital account openness appear to check this, and thus contribute to efficient capital allocation and economic growth.     

知识产权保护能促进经济增长吗？--基于中国省级面板数据的实证分析

在Ginarte-Park方法的基础上,考虑到处于司法转型期的发展中国家的执法力度和立法强度,建立知识产权保护强度指标体系,将中国30个省、自治区、直辖市知识产权保护水平量化。接着运用面板数据分析方法,以人均实际GDP对数为被解释变量,以知识产权保护强度为解释变量,通过实证分析验证了我国加强知识产权保护与经济增长的关系,证明了中国的知识产权保护水平与经济增长之间的显著正相关关系。然后对东中西部地区分别进行实证分析,绘制了异常经济增长与知识产权保护强度的散点图,来作为稳健性检验的一部分。并通过对变量的相关系数矩阵图的分析,初步探讨了知识产权保护促进经济增长的具体路径。结果表明,在控制了时间效应后,知识产权保护强度能够解释省份个体效应的37.4%。     

The Coevolution of Finance and Property Rights: Evidence from Transition Economies

The transition from communism to capitalism was necessarily accompanied by a sudden and abrupt increase in the financialization of society. This increase occurred in an environment that, even now, still has little experience with or expertise in financialization. Given that financialization occurred simultaneously with the growth and evolution of other political and economic institutions, the question arises: What was the effect on these other nascent institutions like property rights? This article empirically analyzes the relationship between financialization and property rights in transition countries. Using a unique monthly database of twenty transition countries over a period from 1989 to 2012, this article finds that the influence of financialization depends on which definition of “financialization” is used. In particular, increases in basic financial intermediation improved property rights. However, higher-order “financialization,” proxied here by the size of capital markets and the wages in the financial sector, appeared to have a negative impact on the development of broad-based property rights in transition.     

Economic freedom–growth nexus in European Union countries

This study examines the economic freedom and economic growth nexus in a panel of 28 European Union countries. We investigate the relationship between growth and different components of economic freedom, measured in five major areas of the Economic Freedom of the World index. The aim of the article is to assess which aspects of economic freedom – and to what extent – contribute to economic growth in the EU. Our empirical analyses suggest that the results are sensitive to the method of estimation. Using the Generalized Method of Moments estimator which allows addressing endogeneity, we found a positive relationship between economic growth and four of the five aspects of economic freedom: security of property rights, quality of monetary policy, freedom to trade and regulatory policies.