A great wall of patents: What is behind China's recent patent explosion?

China's patent surge, documented in this paper, is seemingly paradoxical given the country's weak record of protecting intellectual property rights. Using a firm-level data set that spans the population of China's large and medium-size industrial enterprises, this paper explores the factors that account for China's rising patent activity. While the intensification of research and development in the Chinese economy tracks with patenting activity, it explains only a fraction of the patent explosion. The growth of foreign direct investment in China is prompting Chinese firms to file for more patent applications. Amendments to the patent law that favor patent holders and ownership reform that has clarified the assignment of property rights also emerge as significant sources of China's patent boom. These results are robust to alternative estimation strategies that account for over-dispersion in the patent counts data and firm heterogeneity.     

国有产权转让中的机制设计--基于企业职工的合约选择

在国有产权转让过程中,关键是要克服国有产权本身所具有的不利于进行市场交易的特性,使其交易更符合市场原则。市场本身就是由一个个的合约所构成,是否选择签约及合约的方式是由每个参与者自己作出的。因此,国有产权转让的机制设计就是要尽量使相关的利益主体有权作出对自己有利的合约选择,并对自己的行为负责。     

中国打击假冒伪劣的立法缺陷与完善

中国在打击假冒伪劣立法方面还存在较多漏洞和不完善的地方,不论是产品质量监督管理与产品质量责任立法、打击假冒伪劣的知识产权立法,还是打击假冒伪劣的刑事立法,都需要与时俱进地加以修改和完善。     

Land use rights,market transitions,and labour policy change in China (1980–84)

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the way shifts in property utilization rights in China induced another sequence of institutional changes that led to the rise of rural–urban labour migration from 1980 to 1984, a critical period in the country’s market transition. The paper shows that the 1980s’ Household Responsibility System (HRS), which brought family farming back from the communal system, endowed rural households not only with land use rights, but also with de facto labour allocation rights. These shifts in property relations promoted a growth in agricultural market size as well as the emergence of intraprovincial non‐hukou rural–urban migration, which may have made labour retention policies such as the small township strategy ineffective, and may have given the government an incentive to deregulate its subsequent labour market policy.     

Why the rich may favor poor protection of property rights

In unequal societies, the rich may benefit from shaping economic institutions in their favor. This paper analyzes the dynamics of institutional subversion by focusing on the public protection of property rights. If this institution functions imperfectly, agents have incentives to invest in private protection of property rights. The ability to maintain private protection systems makes the rich natural opponents of public property rights and precludes grass-roots demand to drive the development of the market-friendly institution. The economy becomes stuck in a bad equilibrium with low growth rates, high inequality of income, and wide-spread rent-seeking. The Russian oligarchs of 1990s, who controlled large stakes of newly privatized property, provide motivation for this paper. Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4) (2003) 715–731.     

Bringing economic opportunity into line with environmental influence: A discussion on the Coase theorem and the Porter and van der Linde hypothesis

Environmental concerns and tightened environmental policy parameters have been associated with the notion of additional costs of compliance rather than with innovation and sustainability. The contrary, has also been suggested, claiming that strict environmental legislation merely serves as a catalyst for firms to retain obvious economic and environmental mutual gains–so called win–wins–laying around waiting to be collected. Such implications can be seen from the Porter and van der Linde writings, heavily criticised by Palmer et al. as being built on faulty examples. This paper supports that conclusion and uses property rights and transactions costs theories to find private incentives to explore the win–wins for those actors who have the largest potentials to diminish the pressure on our environment. By applying the Coase theorem, emphasising transaction costs and property rights, this paper argues that strong public support is needed to create private incentives for exploring economic and environmental win–win innovations. The public support suggested is to (A) extend producer responsibilities–where the same costs which may be neglected by the end consumers will, if transferred to the design owner, be viewed as a production cost–and to (B) enforce environmental public procurement. Both may be combined with a support to (C) actors (such as non-governmental organisations and consumer agencies) positioning themselves as information bridges by informing the consumers. The negative effects of asymmetric information among actors can, thereby, be diminished as well as the low interest to primarily care for the environment among common consumers.     

区域知识产权保护发展的空间格局及结构体系研究

以我国各省知识产权保护制度为研究对象，创新性地将探索性空间数据分析方法与社会网络分析方法相结合，基于地理邻近视角，验证了区域知识产权保护的空间相关性、空间集聚特征和空间溢出效应。同时，突破地理近邻效应的局限，解析区域知识产权保护的空间关联特征。结果表明：我国各省知识产权保护具有全局自相关性，相似地区间存在空间集聚效应，不同发展程度地区的空间关联性质不同；网络化后的区域知识产权保护各节点间联系紧密、网络结构稳定，并且可以确定核心行动者和边缘行动者角色；长三角、珠三角、环渤海等较发达地区与其它地区之间存在较多溢出关系。     

Policy tolerance of economic crime? An empirical analysis of the effect of counterfeiting on Italian trade

Some governments seem ambivalent towards economic crime because, on the one hand, there are adverse effects on competition and legal businesses; on the other hand, there are benefits through (shadow) employment and income in less-developed areas, as well as benefits through relations of political clientage. We focus on counterfeiting and its economic effects on trade in Italy during the economic crisis. Using a newly built regional dataset and a dynamic panel model, we find evidence of the dual impact of counterfeiting. The production (and exchange) of fake goods depresses the legal market that relies on intellectual property rights but supports shadow-economic activities for the benefit of illegal workers, criminal organisations, and political clientele. We show that the negative effects outweigh the positive effects.     

Property rights as a complex adaptive system: how entrepreneurship transforms intellectual property structures

This article aims to provide some elements of an evolutionary theory of property rights. It applies a systems-based capital-theoretic perspective to explain the formation and transformation of property rights structures. The approach emphasizes how entrepreneurs create capital combinations by connecting capital goods—defined widely to include property rights, such as patents—in their production plans. Their actions change complementarity relations between property rights as used in production. We treat the property rights structure as a complex adaptive system that exhibits increasing structural complexity as it evolves. Entrepreneurs discover gaps in the property rights system. As they organize production to exploit profit opportunities, entrepreneurs regroup existing intellectual property rights (IPR) into new modules, such as patent pools, that encapsulate more complex combinations of basic building blocks of intellectual property. A patent pool constitutes an interpolation of a new meso level within the macro IPR structure. We apply our framework to the first of the patent pools for digital video compression technology used in digital television and DVDs.     

A Critique of Economic Theory

Abstract:

Faced with home foreclosures, a stagnant economy, and weakly-effective federal programs of relief, Richmond, California, considered using eminent domain to acquire mortgages, modify loans to be more affordable, and thus prevent further erosion of the tax base. Strong objections have been lodged against such alteration of property rights, except through bankruptcy and foreclosure processes. The Richmond proposal is considered in the historical context of changes in the use of eminent domain as described by John R. Commons. Just as economic change forced U.S. courts to change the working definitions of property in the late nineteenth century, current contradictions in the way in which we think of households, and the systemic consequences of their management of debt, may produce changes in law and should alter the way in which economists analyze aggregate consumer spending and borrowing.     

Patriarchy and Property Rights among Yoruba Women in Nigeria

ABSTRACT

In most patriarchal societies, women's property rights are often achieved vicariously, usually through their husbands. By contrast, among the Yoruba of Nigeria, women have some levels of autonomy and independence such that they can accumulate property to which their husbands have no claim, yet they customarily do not have any inheritance right to their husbands’ property. This study examines how this gender-equitable property rights regime affects gender relations at the household and societal levels through in-depth interviews conducted in 2012 with fifty-six purposively selected women property owners who lived in urban Ibadan, Nigeria. Findings include that though economic power has improved the status of the women and contributes to development of their communities, it has not yet translated into equity in decision making. More than economic power is required to attain equality. The capability of defining goals and acting upon them is also critical.     

Endogenous property rights regimes, common-pool resources and trade

A model is developed where opening to trade affects a dynamic common-pool resource stock and welfare through a community's voting decision to institute a property rights regime regulating the stock. The model finds that resource stock levels can decline even when a Markov perfect equilibrium path for labor and property rights regimes are chosen to maximize welfare. Thus, opening to trade can be welfare maximizing even when resource stock declines. Experimental results show that under certain conditions, subjects briefly follow a Markov perfect equilibrium path for property rights regime choice but labor allocations are myopically chosen indicating that some resource dynamics may be considered by subjects.     

Government Partisanship and Property Rights: Cross‐Country Firm‐Level Evidence

Property rights are essential to economic development but vary with the political environment. We develop and test the claim that government partisanship influences the security of business firms' property rights: the perceived security of property rights increases when right‐wing parties take power and declines with the election of left‐leaning parties. Unlike research that uses country‐level aggregates to draw inferences about the determinants of secure property rights, we analyze survey responses of over 7,400 firm owners from 73 countries using a novel difference‐in‐differences approach. We find that the political partisanship of the government in power strongly affects individual perceptions of property rights: firm owners are more likely to perceive that their property rights are secure under right‐leaning governments. Our results are robust to firm‐ and country‐level economic performance as well as controls for political institutions that might induce more stability to property rights, such as the number of checks and balances (veto players) in a system. Overall, our results indicate that business owners' beliefs about the security of property rights are highly responsive to changes in government partisanship.     

产权信念及其对公平偏好与自利偏好的挤出

传统经济理论将产权作为经济绩效的外生变量,但是人类社会的演化路径表明产权是内生于人类族群的共同信念,它与内置于人类心智的公平偏好交互作用影响个体的决策行为。文章运用比较制度实验方法针对不同来源的产权考察其认同信念及其对公平偏好的影响。实验发现,产权不仅导致提议者对回应者和接受者有产权认同信念,也导致提议者的自利偏好和回应者的公平偏好被挤出;通过对利他偏好、策略行为和第三方评价的分离,测度了产权信念;提议者没有强烈的公平偏好动机,而是通过策略行为来最大化自身利益。     

自然保护地自然资源资产产权制度现状辨析

“建立以国家公园为主体的自然保护地体系”是党的十九大所提出的国家公园体制建设的新方向。实现自然保护地的有效保护管理是其重要内容，关键在于通过改革形成科学、合理的自然资源资产产权制度，而厘清自然资源资产产权制度的现状则是进行改革的前提。首先，对现行法律进行系统梳理，明确法律所认定的自然保护地中的自然资源类型。其次，从自然资源的产权种类及所有权改变、用益物权流转三方面总结了自然保护地自然资源资产的产权制度现状。再者，从各类自然保护地申报设立的条件和环保督查中反映出来的问题两方面入手分析了自然保护地的自然资源保护管理现状，从国家公园体制试点采取的措施出发分析了目前的改革探索，并提炼出自然保护地自然资源资产产权制度存在的四大问题，即自然资源资产产权的界定和要求较局限、自然资源所有权行使人虚位、公权与私权的利益协调机制不健全、改革探索中物权途径面临制度障碍。最后，从自然资源资产产权制度设计的角度提出了改革的4个方向。     

关于集体经济的若干看法

“劳动力产权”的涵不应是“劳动力拥有资本产权”,而应是“摆脱了附属地位的劳动者对自己劳动力的拥有”。改革使劳动者拥有自己的劳动力,但这不是集体企业产权改革的内容,不能用“劳动力产权”论指导集体企业的产权改革。“劳动力资本”将不能兼存的两个事物扯在一起,可能根本破坏市场秩序。集体企业改革采用股份合作制形式,解决了传统集体企业产权虚置的问题,但也在企业的公有性质中加入了私有因素。这决定了改革后的集体企业可以参加市场竞争,但在内部又具有互助共济性质。集体经济难以成为市场经济下的基本经济形态,但可发挥帮助和扶持社会弱势群体,执行政府社会福利政策的长处与优点。不应认为集体经济所占比重越高越好。     

外商直接投资、知识产权保护与发展中国家的社会福利--兼论发展中国家的引资战略

本文在一个由发达国家企业和发展中国家企业所构成的寡头垄断的产量竞争模型中 ,考察了在发达国家企业所进行的产品创新型R&D投资具有溢出效应的情况下 ,发达国家企业对发展中国家的外商直接投资 (FDI)所产生的福利效果。本文发现 ,即使发展中国家拥有生产成本相对低廉的优势 ,发达国家企业对发展中国家的FDI也只有在溢出效应较小时才可能发生。但这种情况下的FDI也可能损害发展中国家的同类竞争企业 ,甚至损害发展中国家的社会福利。当然 ,以上结论并不意味着引进外资必然损害发展中国家的利益 ,外资引进对发展中国家所产生的福利效果 ,在很大程度上取决于FDI的性质 (产品市场的所在国 )、发展中国家成本优势的大小以及它对知识产权的保护力度等因素。     

农民住房财产权抵押能否激发农村金融市场*——基于银行贷款数据的实证分析

扩展抵押品范围是缓解农村金融困境的重要途径。在这一思路下，农民住房财产权抵押被寄予厚望，成为近年来农村政策改革的重要方向。本文使用2010—2016年1 024家农信社和农商行的数据，利用2015年12月国务院在天津市蓟州区等59个试点县（市、区）开展为期两年的农民住房财产权抵押贷款试点这一“准自然实验”，对农民住房财产权抵押对涉农贷款供给的影响进行了检验。本文认为，现阶段农民住房面临着价值评估难、抵押物处置难的问题，抵押效果不佳。实证结果显示，农民住房财产权抵押没有显著增加涉农贷款供给，对农村金融的供给作用有限。本文在考虑了农民住房财产权抵押对其他担保方式的替代作用、农地经营权抵押和“三块地”改革的影响之后，上述结果依然稳健。本文的政策启示是，政府应着力做好农房抵押贷款改革的配套措施，推动宅基地制度改革，探索扩大农民住房财产权的受让范围，充分挖掘住房财产权的价值潜力，缓解抵押物处置难问题。     

我国商业银行效率的影响因素:产权制度还是市场结构

采用自由分布法(DFA),利用似不相关回归估计测算了我国商业银行的X-成本效率状况,并分析了产权制度与市场竞争程度对我国商业银行效率的影响。实证检验发现,我国国有银行和股份制银行的X-成本效率存在结构性差别,产权制度是造成这种差异的关键原因,市场竞争程度对银行效率也产生了非常重要的影响;且两者对银行效率的影响是一种互补关系而不是替代关系。可供选择的政策建议包括:推进产权制度改革,完善银行的法人治理结构;优化银行业市场结构,促进银行体系效率的提高;国有银行要适当收缩规模,正确配置资源;股份制银行要尽快充实资本金,扩大规模,增强竞争力。     

Futures Contracts in Water Leasing: An Experimental Analysis Using Basin Characteristics of the Rio Grande,NM

Providing for increased water demands during periods of persistent drought and climatic variability may require water managers, users and planners to think differently about how water resources are allocated. A water marketing institution that allows water rights holders to reallocate water on a temporary basis could overcome these challenges with minimal conflict. In this paper, a water marketing institution that allows for the temporary reallocation of water rights in a spot and futures market is investigated. The results provide insight into three key questions: (1) how does trading impact the physical system, (2) does the value of water differ by trading agents, (3) how is economic welfare redistributed as a result of trading? Results of experimental treatments display minor impacts to the physical system, that prices differ across the different type of trading agents and the addition of a futures market has the ability to decrease market prices while increasing economic welfare as a futures market allows users to hedge against future water uncertainty.