Institutions,governance and incentives in common property regimes for African rangelands

The general distinctions between open access, state property, common property and private property are now well established in the academic literature. When applied to African rangelands, however, common property admits a wide variety of resource management regimes. To formulate effective policies it is necessary to understand the structure and operations of particular regimes. In this paper we discuss three examples of common property regimes, two from the southern African nation of Lesotho and one from the west African nation of Senegal, to illustrate some of the key characteristics of common property regimes. In particular, it is important to understand the structure of governance, the types of institutions that govern behavior, and the compatibility between governance, institutions and individual incentives. A common property regime can only be effective if its institutions are compatible with the structure of governance. The extent of its effectiveness also depends upon the incentives and expectations of individuals expected to enforce the rules of the institutions or comply with their terms. At present, most African governments lack the organizational capacity and political will necessary to implement state property regimes, official regulations on resource use, or individual property rights for rangelands resources. In many cases it is more appropriate for governments to define and enforce group rights to particular resources, then help to establish conditions in which internal group dynamics yield efficient resource management outcomes.     

The commons,common property,and environmental policy

The conceptual confusion among property, common property, open access resources, and the tragedy of the commons is identified and rectified. Property rights are defined and clarified. From that it is possible to understand the traditional confusion between open access resources and common property resources. It is urged that common property regimes be used in place of common property resources. This will emphasize that institutional arrangements are human creations and that natural resources can be managed as private property, as common property, or as state property. It is the property regime — an authority system — that indicates the rules of use of a variety of natural resources.     

The emergence of property rights enforcement in early trade: A behavioral model without reputational effects

The present article focuses on the conditions that allow governments to increase property rights protection because they expect enough income from such action. We develop a behavioral explanation, according to which the answer lies in the growth in the importance, size and wealth of merchant guilds in the medieval era in Western Europe as well as a somewhat surprising effect of volatile price structures. We add to prior research by showing that even uncoordinated embargo pressures among multiple guilds could get medieval rulers to offer high levels of property rights protection.     

Corporate governance,environmental regulations,and technological change

This paper investigates the relationship between environmental regulations and innovation by focusing on the automobile industry in a cross-country setting. We provide empirical evidence that the presence of agency problems mitigates the negative effects of environmental regulations on overall R&D activity, which leads to full compensation when the degree of agency problems is sufficiently high. Guiding our empirical analysis, we provide a general model consistent with the structure of existing ownership data. Specifically, we model ownership structure as a combination of two extreme corporate governance types. On the one extreme there are profit maximizers, and on the other extreme there are managers who are only concerned with their private benefits. The model leads to a simple country level ownership indicator and shows that if an economy is dominated by firms with higher agency problems, then pollution tax might even increase overall R&D, while reducing pollution. According to our estimations, such an outcome is possible only for out-of-sample values of the ownership indicator, where the degree of agency problems is extremely high.     

The organisation of innovation: collaboration, cooperation and multifunctional groups in UK and German manufacturing

Marked differences exist between the institutional and socialcontext for innovation in the UK and Germany. The question addressedhere is how these different contexts affect the objectives andorganisation of innovation in UK and German manufacturing. Inparticular, the paper examines the extent to which UK and Germanplants engage in inter-plant collaboration and cooperation andmultifunctional working as part of their innovative activity,and explores the reasons for differences in these patterns ofinvolvement. The investigation is based on a large-scale, comparativesurvey of manufacturing plants in the two countries. In Germany,institutional and social norms are found to encourage collaborativeinter-plant innovation, but aspects of the German skills trainingand industrial relations systems make the adoption of more flexibleinternal systems more difficult. In the UK, by contrast, themore adversarial nature of inter-firm relations makes it moredifficult to establish external collaborations based on mutualtrust, but less restrictive labour market structures make iteasier for UK plants to adopt multifunctional working. Thisis linked to differences in attitudes to the property rightsand transaction cost problems inherent in innovation.     

Accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance: A research framework

Along with concerns over the effectiveness of earth system governance, ways of enhancing its accountability and legitimacy are increasingly coming to the fore in both scholarly debate and political practice. Concerns over accountability and legitimacy pertain to all levels of governance, from the local to the global, and cover the spectrum of public and private governance arrangements. This conceptual article elaborates on the sources, mechanisms and reform options relating to more accountable, legitimate and democratic earth system governance. We proceed in four steps. First, we conceptualize accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance. Second, we place questions of accountability and legitimacy within the larger context of earth system transformation, which, we argue, poses special challenges to the pursuit of accountability and legitimacy. Third, drawing on the contributions to this special section, we analyze different sources and mechanisms of accountability and legitimacy and their effects on the democratic potential and effectiveness of governance. Fourth, in concluding, we outline reform options that may help alleviate persisting deficits in the democratic potential of earth system governance.     

Social capital in community level environmental governance: A critique

Social capital is often claimed to facilitate collective action regarding the management of complex environmental goods and services. However, there is little systematic analysis in the literature that explains the way social capital aids in fostering collective action. The paper integrates ideas from institutional ecological economics, sociology and anthropology to argue that power relations, involving struggle and resistance, should be acknowledged as they affect collective action. We address the question of why social capital should not be straightforwardly associated positively with common property resource management. To unravel the complexity of the links between social capital, collective action and common property resource management, the concepts of common knowledge and symbolic power are introduced.     

Host country's governance and the size of foreign investors

We find that smaller foreign investors are more sensitive to the quality of host country's governance than larger investors. This may be the case as smaller foreign firms have less bargaining power and are more sensitive to uncertainty and risk.     

科技型中小企业知识产权融资模式选择研究

随着知识产权运用的深化,知识产权融资已成为科技型中小企业融资的新途径。文章基于资源基础论,对知识产权融资能力进行了分析,将其分解为知识产权财务能力和知识产权战略能力。现有知识产权融资模式偏重政府自上而下的推动,忽视了中小企业对知识产权融资的承接能力,由此导致企业对知识产权融资的认可度不高。科技型中小企业知识产权融资模式需要从企业能力出发,以知识产权财务能力和战略能力为抓手,建立知识产权融资模式的选择模型,厘清企业知识产权融资的需求和特点,针对企业情况合理配置各类知识产权融资方式。科技型中小企业知识产权融资模式只有建立在企业自身能力基础之上,才能推动企业积极投入,进而吸引相关主体参与并推广知识产权融资活动。     

Hot spots regulation and environmental justice

This paper analyzes whether regulating “hot spots” of toxic air pollution by increasing the spatial resolution of regulation could address environmental justice (EJ) concerns. To examine this question, this paper develops a decision model of a regulator choosing emission controls within a net cost minimizing framework. An empirical application of the model using air toxic emission data for Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties in Florida estimates the emission standards and spatial distribution of risks at a coarse and a finer spatial resolutions. Implications for EJ are analyzed by combining the simulated spatial risk distributions at the two resolutions with the demographic data. Results indicate that different measures of EJ point to different conclusions regarding the question of whether finer resolution regulation alleviates EJ concerns. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for EJ policy.     

Inefficiency and common property regimes

Much of the literature on the commons focuses on the fact that many agents are assigned usage rights simultaneously, but less attention has been paid to the exercise of exclusion rights. The simultaneous exercise of one of the two rights by all the owners of a common causes a problem of overexploitation in the first case (competition “in use”) and underuse in the second (competition “in exclusion”). The relevance of both inefficiencies stems from the way they illustrate the general conflict between individual and collective interests. This paper proposes a formal synthesis of the problems of inefficiency associated with the exploitation of resources in common property regimes. The synthesis takes into account the following features: i) the importance of the consumer surplus for the analysis of the issue; ii) the attitude of economic agents in the face of a reciprocal externality linked to the exploitation of the common; and iii) the social and the private costs of exploitation.     

Rights,governance, and foreign direct investment: an industry-level assessment

Theories of multinational enterprises emphasize that foreign direct investment (FDI) is undertaken in different industries for different reasons, yet studies of the effects of rights and governance on FDI generally rely on aggregate-level FDI data. This paper evaluates US FDI outflows to 15 industries (eight manufacturing, seven non-manufacturing) in 54 countries in a linear dynamic panel data gravity FDI model using a ‘system’ generalized method of moments estimator and several widely used rights and governance indexes. At the aggregate level, we estimate that stronger rights and governance have a positive effect on FDI, consistent with most prior studies. At the industry level, we estimate larger positive effects of rights and governance on FDI for service than manufacturing industries, particularly for the information and the finance and insurance industries.     

Contract-Intensive Money: Contract Enforcement, Property Rights, and Economic Performance

We introduce a new, easily accessed and objective measure of the enforceability of contracts and the security of property rights. This measure, called contract-intensive money or CIM, is based on citizens decisions regarding the form in which they choose to hold their financial assets. Country case studies show that CIM varies over time in response to political events in ways predicted by our arguments. We also show that CIM is positively related to investment and growth rates, and to the relative size of contract-dependent sectors of the economy.     

国有企业新型公司治理结构问题及改革探析

国有企业公司治理结构的完善一直是改革的重点之一。随着国企现代企业制度的确立,这一问题从形式上可以说已经得到解决。然而,2004年一系列问题的出现充分说明,公司治理结构在国企中还未真正确立,或者说是出现了一些新的问题。国有公司治理低效的根源是产权问题,因此,只有在产权改革的基础上才能建立真正有效的公司治理结构。     

乡镇企业的环境污染问题及其对策分析

乡镇企业的环境污染问题其产生原因是多方面的,主要有乡镇企业地理环境的自身脆弱性,相关利益者的不作为以及乡镇企业的环境产权不明晰等原因,为此应该采取法律、行政、经济和教育等各种措施来加大对乡镇企业环境污染问题的治理。     

A Simple Model of Inefficient Institutions

This paper develops a simple model of economic and political institutions that lead to poor aggregate economic performance. In the model economy, groups with political power, the elite, choose policies to increase their income and to directly or indirectly transfer resources from the rest of society to themselves. The resulting equilibrium is generally inefficient because of three distinct mechanisms: (1) revenue extraction, (2) factor price manipulation and (3) political consolidation. In particular, the elite may pursue inefficient policies to extract revenue from other groups. They may do so to reduce the demand for factors coming from other groups in the economy, thus indirectly benefiting from changes in factor prices. Finally, they may try to impoverish other groups competing for political power. The elite's preferences over inefficient policies translate into inefficient economic institutions. The notable exception to this general picture emerges when long‐term investments are important, thus creating a commitment (holdup) problem, whereby equilibrium taxes and regulations are worse than the elite would like them to be from an ex ante point of view. In this case, economic institutions that provide additional security of property rights to other groups can be useful.     

Reading, writing, and religion: Institutions and human capital formation

In this paper, we empirically test the role that religious and political institutions play in the accumulation of human capital. Using a new data set on literacy in colonial India, we find that Muslim literacy is negatively correlated with the proportion of Muslims in the district, although we find no similar result for Hindu literacy. We employ a theoretical model which suggests that districts which experienced a more recent collapse of Muslim political authority had more powerful and better funded religious authorities, who established religious schools which were less effective at promoting literacy on the margin than state schools. We test this hypothesis econometrically, finding that the period of Muslim political collapse has a statistically significant effect on Muslim literacy while controlling for it eliminates the significance of the proportion of Muslims on Muslim literacy. This suggests that the “long hand of history” has played some role in subsequent differences in human capital formation through the persistence of institutions discouraging literacy.     

China and India's insertion in the intellectual property rights regime: sustaining or disrupting the rules?

This paper looks at the insertion of China and India in the contested and highly legalised regime of intellectual property rights (IP). In doing so it pays particular attention at two dimensions, the internal adoption of this regime and external endorsement/contestation of international IP norms. Much has been written about whether emerging countries will challenge or support the maintenance of an open rules-based multilateral trade system. In this context, the differentiated integration of these two countries in the IP regime is notable. Domestically, China despite much criticism for widespread IP infringement has followed a maximalist interpretation of TRIPS. India, on the contrary has followed other emerging countries in pursuing a more critical, minimalist understanding. These positions have also been visible at the multilateral arena. This empirical finding runs contrary to the assumption that defiance results from market power. The divergence is the more surprising given a recent explosion of patent filings in both countries. From a political economy perspective, this should translate into support for stricter rules under TRIPS. In explanaining the two countries’ divertent insertion this paper looks beyond economic (market) power and domestic interests and underlines the role of ideational legacies, domestic interests and regulatory capacity. The paper thus stresses the need to look deep into domestic politics and ideational cleavages, as well as at their evolution over time, in order to better understand the international behaviour of emerging countries.     

Payments for environmental services as an alternative to logging under weak property rights: The case of Indonesia

Decentralization reforms in Indonesia have led to local communities negotiating logging agreements with timber companies for relatively low financial payoffs and at high environmental cost. This paper analyzes the potential of payments for environmental services (PES) to provide an alternative to logging for these communities and to induce forest conservation. We apply a game-theoretical model of community-firm interactions that explicitly considers two stylized conditions present in the Indonesian context: (i) community rights to the forest remain weak even after decentralization, and (ii) the presence of logging companies interested in the commercial exploitation of the forest. Intuition may suggest that PES design should focus on those communities with the lowest expected payments from logging deals. However, we show that these communities may not be able to enforce a PES agreement, i.e., they may not be able to prevent logging activities by timber companies. Moreover, some communities would conserve the forest anyway; in these cases PES would not lead to additional environmental gains. Most important, the introduction of PES may increase a community's expected payoff from a logging agreement. A failure to consider this endogeneity in expected payoffs could lead to communities opting for logging agreements despite PES, simply allowing communities to negotiate better logging deals. Our results indicate that PES design is a complex task, and that the costs of an effective PES system could potentially be much higher than expected from observing current logging fees. Using data collected in Indonesia on actual logging fees received by communities, we illustrate how the theoretical results could be used in empirical analysis to guide PES design. Our results are likely to be useful in other cases where local people make resource use decisions but have weak property rights over these resources, and where external commercial forces are present. The results highlight the importance of understanding the details of the local context in order to design PES programs appropriately.     

知识产权保护的公平与效率研究

知识产权的制度经济学派从不同角度论证了知识产权保护可以提高资源配置效率.知识产权应该保护毋庸置疑,但是知识财产本身的特性决定了知识产权保护具有两面性.知识产权保护必须在效率和公平之间寻求平衡,否则,会在二元经济、阶级差别、技术进步、国际贸易和诉讼、人的自由、大学公司化等方面产生负面效应.