Go West Young Man: Self‐Selection and Endogenous Property Rights

If, as Hume argues, property is a self‐referring custom of a group of people, then property rights depend on how that group forms and orders itself. In this article we investigate how people construct a convention for property in an experiment in which groups of self‐selected individuals can migrate between three geographically separate regions. To test a hypothesis of Demsetz's, we vary across two treatments the external benefits of migrating. We find that self‐selection has a powerful effect on establishing conventions of property and begetting increases in wealth through exchange and specialization. We also find support for the Demsetz hypothesis.     

Ownership Restructuring, Marketization and Wealth Inequality in Urban China： 1995 and 2002

This paper proposes a property transformation perspective to examine the mechanisms of wealth accumulation and wealth inequality creation during China's post‐1978 transformation. It examines how enterprise ownership restructuring, marketization and state politics have resulted in greater wealth inequality between cadres and ordinary workers, between public sectors/organizations and private sectors/organizations. Mainly drawing on data from the Chinese Household Income Project conducted in 1995 and 2002, we find that the property transformation process has created greater wealth disparity among different occupational groups and among those working in different work organizations since the mid‐1990s. However, it is inconclusive whether non‐housing wealth or total household wealth are increasing at the same pace across different occupations and work organizations with the growing market penetration and the spread of privatization.     

Gentlewomanly capitalism? Spinsters,widows, and wealth holding in England and Wales,c. 1800–1860

This article examines the demographic and geographical importance of wealthy middle-class women. It argues that in certain towns and cities, notably London, such women were of sufficient importance to merit attention in their own right. Drawing upon a sample of wills, it describes the types of wealth owned by these women. By examining women's investment in government securities, it argues that women's wealth was of crucial importance to the British state. Its findings challenge conventional understandings of the relationships between gender ideology, wealth holding, and economic development.     

The allocation of merchant capital in early Tudor London

This article is a discussion of the allocation of merchants' capital in early Tudor London among household furnishings, business inventories, debts, orphans' estates, landed property, and other forms of income. Previously, historians had to rely on either goods or income summary assessments in the enrolled subsidy returns to estimate wealth. These newly discovered valuations for 1535 provide quantitative evidence for the enormous importance of credit in trade, and show that merchants, as soon as they could, invested much of their wealth in property.     

Limits to Alternative Forms of Capitalization: The Case of Anatolian Holding Companies

Since the late 1960s, alternative forms of capitalization have emerged in the absence of an effective capital markets regime in Turkey. We can see these alternative forms in the failed attempts to create Anatolian holding companies through the direct investment of small savings. This article shows how Anatolian holding companies became victims of poor institutional and regulatory regimes, and how the lack of institutions to promote impersonal trust in the economy in turn, permitted widespread abuses. We identify populist politics, lax oversight, and social norms that incorporated gambling as three interlinked reasons which hindered the genesis and development of viable capital market reform and regulatory institutions in Turkey.     

The accumulation of property by southern blacks and whites: Individual-level evidence from a South Carolina cotton county, 1910-1919

This paper examines new data on wealth and wealth accumulation by blacks and whites in Calhoun County, South Carolina between 1910 and 1919. Despite focusing on a single county, the data utilized in this paper make it possible to explore property accumulation by southern blacks and whites in new ways. Unlike previous studies, this one provides information on both real quantities and dollar assessments. This breakdown reveals that the rapid accumulation of property by blacks was entirely real and not due in part to an increasingly discriminatory assessment policy. By merging the assessment data with individual-level census records, it is possible to examine how wealth and wealth accumulation were influenced by race, gender, age, occupation, and literacy. In particular, the effect of literacy on the wealth of black men in 1910 was found to be economically strong in high wealth quantiles but weak in low wealth quantiles. By 1919, the impact of literacy on the wealth of black men had become economically important across the board. Furthermore, literacy had a significant influence on the relative size of wealth accumulations but offered little protection against low accumulations.     

以人为本,关注细节,提升基层党建工作效果——世博对企业基层党建工作的启迪

世博有期,影响无限。上海世博会是一座蕴含极为丰富的文化和精神宝藏。世博会举办过程中全方位体现以人为本、持续创新带来持续活力的成功实践,赢得了无数的精彩。本文通过汲取世博会成功举办的宝贵经验,结合作者的工作实际,对新时期如何进一步加强国有企业党建工作,如何体现以人为本,关注细节,实现企业与员工的共同发展,进行了有益的探索和思考。     

The unpopularity of the hearth tax and the social geography of London in 1666

This article presents a new evaluation of the Restoration hearth tax and the social geography of London, first, by comparing the 1666 London hearth tax return with unpublished collectors’ accounts; second, by analysing the huge amount of extraneous data in these records on the social conditions in London; and third, by considering how different forms of tax avoidance and tax evasion operated on the streets of London. The article discusses wealth distribution by location and social status, and shows how privileged groups used diplomatic, ecclesiastical, and military rank to avoid the hearth tax, while ordinary householders turned to doorstep opposition, especially in the outer and poorer suburbs, in expressing their hostility towards the heath tax. The article demonstrates that in Metropolitan London the assessment and collection of the hearth tax depended not only upon the enforcement of the parliamentary legislation, but also upon negotiation and give‐and‐take between tax collectors and tax payers, sometimes in consultation with the Crown. As a result the hearth tax failed to fill the king's purse, was unpopular in the capital and in the country, and created onerous work for both auditors and hearth tax collectors, which contributed to the short life of the hearth tax (1662–89).     

个人住房房产税改革研究——基于社会福利保障水平增进的视角

我国要推出的房产税改革,实际上是要对个人住房征收房产持有税,并要对其如何征、征多少的问题进行改革。文章在分析理论界的基本观点与试点方案的基础上总结出我国个人住房房产税改革的基本思路与目标,论证了我国逐步推进并全面开征住宅房产税符合新福利经济学的希克斯效率改进,能增进社会总体福利水平;并从调节收入分配与提升福利保障水平的角度对我国住宅房产税的税收制度进行了设计。     

Marital fertility and wealth during the fertility transition: rural France, 1750–1850

It has been long established that the demographic transition began in eighteenth‐century France, yet there is no consensus on exactly why fertility declined. This analysis links fertility life histories to wealth at death data for four rural villages in France, 1750–1850. For the first time, the wealth–fertility relationship during the onset of the French fertility decline can be analysed. Where fertility is declining, wealth is a powerful predictor of smaller family size. This article argues that fertility decline in France was a result of changing levels of economic inequality, associated with the 1789 Revolution. In cross‐section, the data support this hypothesis: where fertility is declining, economic inequality is lower than where fertility is high.     

Mining and Social Movements: Struggles Over Livelihood and Rural Territorial Development in the Andes

Social movements have been viewed as vehicles through which the concerns of poor and marginalized groups are given greater visibility within civil society, lauded for being the means to achieve local empowerment and citizen activism, and seen as essential in holding the state to account and constituting a grassroots mechanism for promoting democracy. However, within development studies little attention has been paid to understanding how social movements can affect trajectories of development and rural livelihood in given spaces, and how these effects are related to movements’ internal dynamics and their interaction with the broader environment within which they operate. This paper addresses this theme for the case of social movements protesting contemporary forms of mining investment in Latin America. On the basis of cases from Peru and Ecuador, the paper argues that the presence and nature of social movements has significant influences both on forms taken by extractive industries (in this case mining) and on the effects of this extraction on rural livelihoods. In this sense, one can usefully talk about rural development as being co-produced by movements, mining companies, and other actors, in particular the state. The terms of this co-production, however, vary greatly among different locations, reflecting the distinct geographies of social mobilization and of mineral investment, as well as the varying power relationships among the different actors involved.     

房地产财富效应对社会财富分配的影响分析

随着房地产资产在居民家庭总资产中所占的比重日益提高,其在社会财富的新一轮分配中起着决定性的影响。本文通过分析房地产财富效应对社会财富分配的影响,提出房地产资产价格上涨的财富效应拉大居民财富分配差距,是造成贫富差距进一步扩大的重要原因之一,最终将对宏观经济增长产生影响。因此必须关注房地产市场财富效应对社会财富分配的影响,既要根据宏观经济平衡的要求保持房地产行业的稳定与合理发展,也要从社会和谐稳定的高度来调节房地产在居民财富分配过程中的作用。     

产权、信息与反公共地悲剧

本文用完全信息和不完全信息博弈论工具，分别在双方共同拥有产权和完整产权条件下，考虑以下四种情况下的反公共品提供：双方共同拥有产权条件下的完全信息、不完全信患和单一产权条件下的完全信息、不完全信息，并比较四种情况下资源的利用程度。本文结论是，产权分割和信息不完全会导致较严重的反公共地悲剧，因此，在经济管理中首先应该使经济资源具有完整的产权，如果现实的经济管理由于某种原因只能由多个机构共同拥有排他权，不能由单一机构或个人拥有，那么，就应使资源使用成本是完全信息，我国国有资产改革和招商引资“办证大厅”现象验证了以上结论。     

Fixed-rent contracts and investment incentives. A comparative analysis of English tenant right

This article stresses that tenants are more motivated to improve the holding when they have formal property rights over their improvements. In this case, however, their rights over the improvements usually come into conflict with the landlords' rights over the land. Through a comparison with what happened elsewhere in Europe, the article analyses the attempts to delineate and ensure both rights in nineteenth-century England. No wholly satisfactory solution was found to the problem and the article concludes that this is one of the reasons explaining the poor performance of English agriculture in the early twentieth century.     

Wealth Privilege and the Racial Wealth Gap: A Case Study in Economic Stratification

The emerging subfield of stratification economics is a response to the orthodoxy’s resistance to recognizing the role of racial and ethnic disparities and its penchant for adopting cultural explanations for intergroup differences. With this view, the literature on the racial wealth gap and its particular embrace of the Life Cycle Hypothesis (LCH) offers a clear example of this critique at work. Not only is the LCH incapable of explaining why the racial wealth gap is so much larger than the income gap, but its limitations restrict the range of explanations explored. As an alternative, this paper introduces the Wealth Privilege (WP) model. Unlike the LCH, the WP model can incorporate the effects of contemporary racism as well as the systemic sources that are a legacy of several centuries of racialized policies. Using evidence from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), this article offers empirical corroboration as well. Since the SCF queries households on their attitudes toward saving and investment, this article investigates the extent that cultural differences explain the wealth gap. To limit the problem of skewness, which is inherent in wealth studies, the analysis uses an inverse hyperbolic-sine transformation of household net worth. The OLS regression results show scant support for key features of the LCH while demonstrating the importance of asset ownership and family support, both crucial facets of the WP model. Two different decomposition methods, Blinder - Oaxaca and DiNardo - Fortin - Lemieux, corroborate these conclusions. As wealth is easily transferable across generations, the evidence supports the contention that household wealth serves as a source of economic stratification as it functions to preserve and even widen the racial wealth gap.     

Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain,c. 1870–1935

This article explores the widening ownership of stocks and shares in Great Britain between 1870 and 1935. It demonstrates the extent of that growth and the increasing number of small investors. Women became more important in terms of the number of shareholders and value of holdings. Factors that encouraged this trend included the issue of less risky types of investments, and legal changes relating to married women's property. We examine the ‘deepening’ importance of stocks and shares for wealth holders, arguing that the growing significance of these kinds of financial assets was as important as the growth in the investor population.     

深圳市小产权房类型、成因思考

深圳市小产权房因原土地类型不同而呈现不同的形式,包括在宅基地、集体建设用地、耕地、审批批准后建房、合作建房等类型;由于自2004年开始深圳土地实行国有化,所有集体土地所有权转变为国有土地所有权,从而使在土地所有权基础上设立的用益物权也发生变动,从而导致土地之上的小产权房也各有特性。深圳在清理小产权房过程中,应当充分考虑不同的土地使用权和房屋判断小产权房的出路。     

University education,homeownership and housing wealth

We utilise the implementation of the 1999 higher education expansion in China as a natural experiment to examine the relationship between university educational attainment, homeownership and housing wealth. Using data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, results from our preferred models, which correct for endogeneity, suggest that having a university qualification generates a 3.5–6.3 percentage points increase in the probability of homeownership and a 24.3–51.1 percentage points increase in total housing wealth. We also find that holding a university qualification increases the number of houses one owns and housing wealth for those whose housing wealth is above the median. We find that self-reported social status and entitlement to superannuation are channels through which higher education affects homeownership and housing wealth and that financial literacy is a channel through which higher education affects housing wealth. We find considerable heterogeneity in the impact of higher education on housing outcomes across gender, family income levels, parent education and between urban and rural areas.     

Institutional change,property rights and economic performance in post‐apartheid in South Africa

This article examines redistributive institutional change in South Africa within the theoretical framework provided by North (1979; 1981; 1991) and Eggertsson (1990). By drawing a distinction between the productive potential of an economy and institutionally feasible production possibilities, we can develop an analytical structure for evaluating how alternative systems of property rights can affect productive activity in South Africa. Although this exercise cannot predict actual outcomes in South Africa, it does accord property rights a central role in a specific theory of institutional change, and accordingly may assist in determining how certain forms of institutional change can influence economic performance in a transitional democracy.     

房产信贷约束下中国房价波动与非住房消费的门槛效应分析

针对城镇居民非住房消费不足与高房价并存的典型现象,运用面板门槛模型对31个省区市2005—2019年的数据进行研究,探讨房价波动对非住房消费的影响并揭示空间差异。结果表明：房价波动对家庭非住房消费既有挤出效应也有财富效应,其中随着房产信贷约束的放松,挤出效应减弱,而财富效应增强;东部、中部、西部和东北部之间的门槛效应是异质的;各地区住房信贷约束水平存在明显差异,对房价与非住房消费之间的异质性关联起着至关重要的作用;房价波动和房产信贷约束并不是导致低消费的综合因素,无法负担的房价以及家庭抚养负担的增加是低消费的综合因素。因此,稳定房价仍是当务之急,房产信贷政策应与房地产市场的发展相适应,以促进消费。