从“管水协会”案例看民间协会的集体行动机制

局部区域性共享资源的治理应当以社区自治为主,政府间接支持为辅的方式。由于共享资源的性质决定了社区自治是集体行动的性质,因此需要围绕协会的组织与领导实现共享资源治理中的成本投入与分摊以及收益的分享。以协会的组织和契约性规则为正式制度,结合以互惠合作为核心的群体规范等非正式制度共同构成"管水协会"这类民间协会的集体行动机制,实现共享资源的社区自治。     

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.     

What motivates common pool resource users? Experimental evidence from the field

This paper develops and tests several models of pure Nash strategies of individuals who extract from a common pool resource when they are motivated by a combination of self-interest and preferences for altruism, reciprocity, inequity aversion, or conformity. Using data from experiments conducted in three regions of Colombia that depend critically on a local fishery, we test whether an econometric summary of the subjects’ pure Nash strategies is consistent with one or more of these models. We find that a model that balances self-interest with a strong preference for conformity best describes average strategies.     

Confidence in formal institutions and reliance on informal institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article uses survey data to investigate the relationship between citizens’ confidence in formal institutions and reliance on informal institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). We find an endogenous substituting relationship and that the different institutional structures currently existing in the two entities in BiH are significantly linked to respondents’ confidence in formal and reliance on informal institutions. In addition, perceptions of higher indirect costs of institutions and a lack of their improvement are associated with a lower confidence in formal and a greater reliance on informal institutions; the minority ethnic groups in each region are less confident in formal and rely more on informal institutions compared to the majority group; and more reliance on informal institutions is found amongst males and respondents from urban areas.     

Explaining informal payments for health services in Central and Eastern Europe: an institutional asymmetry perspective

The aim of this paper is to propose and evaluate a new institutional theory explanation for patients making informal payments for health services in Central and Eastern Europe. This views informal payments by patients to healthcare professionals as arising when formal institutional failures lead to an asymmetry between the laws and regulations of formal institutions and the unwritten rules of informal institutions. Reporting a 2013 Eurobarometer survey of the prevalence of informal payments by patients in Central and Eastern European countries, a strong association is revealed between the level of asymmetry between the formal and informal institutions, and the propensity to make informal payments. The association between informal payments and various formal institutional imperfections is then explored to evaluate which structural conditions might reduce this institutional asymmetry, and thus the propensity to make informal payments. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for tackling such informal practices.     

Religious Identity,Informal Institutions,and the Nation-States of the Near East

This paper uses the Near East as a case study to describe how religious identity became a source of preference formation and a cause of social cleavage. It formulates the concepts of identity-sharing groups and resource-sharing groups to bridge between religious identity's social-psychological aspects and its socioeconomic effects. The paper then argues that social cleavages among religious identity-sharing groups generated informal institutions that are incompatible with the abstract formal institutions of the nation-states of Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. That incompatibility hobbles efforts of formal state institutions to promote economic development, and instead restrains economic growth by intensifying existing conflicts among groups. It suggests that a state that could promote economic development would be the one that recognizes and supports the informal, localized institutions and allows those of them with common features to evolve into abstract formal institutions.     

Resilience and Dynamism of Embedded Financial Transactions in Cameroon

Following the recent financial crisis, institutional economists have issued a “call” for institutionalist research on alternative financial systems. While suggestions have been forthcoming, (for example, in Volume 48, Issue 4 of the Journal of Economic Issues), most have centered on national-level innovations in advanced capitalist countries, prompting further calls for “community” and individual level anti-capitalist financial relations. With this article, we respond to such calls. We show how networks of finance in Cameroon bridge the formal/informal dualisms in lending/savings activities. We demonstrate that any debates about whether to formalize informal financial institutions or leave them alone weaken in Cameroon because, through networks, people access both formal and informal financial institutions for different purposes and at various stages in the life of these institutions. This dynamism explains why, in spite of the growth of money markets in Cameroon, informal financial institutions have not disappeared, nor declined. In fact, they have expanded, contrary to predictions in existing new institutional economics research. While informal institutions have evolved, they have not necessarily become formal banks, microfinance, or stock markets. Rather, the informal financial institutions have adopted and adapted in terms of both lending and saving practices in a country where growing formal financialization has become the norm. Our findings challenge neoclassical and new institutional economics theories about money, credit, and the actors in the money market.     

The nexus of economic and institutional evolution

The current state of the development economics literature ascribes an indisputable central role to institutions. This paper presents a formal model of institutional evolution that is based on the dynamic interactions between formal and informal institutions and economic development; the main features of the model is consistent with the fundamental theories that shed light to institutional evolution, namely the collective action and transaction cost theories, as well as dialectics. As informal institutional quality accumulates like technological know-how, while the level of formal institutional quality is chosen by the government to maximize welfare, subject to the economic and political costs. The solution of the model yields a punctuated trajectory of formal institutional evolution. Simulations reveal that the extent of diversity in informal institutional quality across a country delays formal institutional reforms. We also observe that, both the optimal quality of formal institutions and welfare are higher the more homogeneous is the country with respect to its informal institutions or the cultural attributes.     

公司治理制度的失衡与失效及其改革新方向:新制度经济学视角考察

新制度经济学把制度分解为正式制度和非正式制度两大类,认为两类制度各具特色、相互依存、相互补充,构成了制度的整体实施框架。公司治理属于制度的范畴,其中的正式制度和非正式制度必须兼容互补方能发挥治理作用,然而公司治理中伦理机制的缺失几乎是全球性的普遍问题,造成公司治理制度的失衡与失效,进行企业伦理与公司治理制度的整合是当前形势下公司治理改革的方向。     

Flexible Labor Regulations and Informality in Egypt

Do more flexible labor market regulations reduce informal employment in formal firms? This paper examines the effects of changes in labor regulations on the incidence of formal employment. Using the case of Egypt, we study the effects of the introduction of more flexible labor regulations in 2003 on the probability that non‐contractual workers will be granted a formal employment contract. To identify the effect of the law and control for potential confounding factors, we use a difference‐in‐difference estimator that measures the difference in the pre‐ and post‐law probability of obtaining a formal contract across a treatment group of non‐contractual workers initially employed in formal firms and a comparison group of non‐contractual workers initially employed in informal firms. The latter serve as a useful comparison group since informal firms are unlikely to formalize as a result of the law, so that the only way their workers can become formal is to move to another firm. Our findings show that the passage of the new labor law did in fact increase the probability of transitioning to formal employment for non‐contractual workers employed in formal firms by about 3–3.5 percentage points, or the equivalent of at least a fifth of informal workers in formal firms.     

Tax evasion in transition: Outcome of an institutional clash? Testing Feige's conjecture in Albania

A field survey of households was conducted in Tirana, Albania in 2000. A response rate of 89.3% yielded 1.340 valid questionnaires, allowing me to test Feige's (In: Nelson, J.M., Tilley, C., Walker, L. (Eds.), Transforming Post-communist Political Economics. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, p. 21) conjecture that more tax evasion will be observed, when formal and informal institutions clash. Respondents’ attitudes towards formal and informal institutions were obtained by applying factor analysis to their responses to a series of attitudinal questions. The theoretical importance of the interaction between formal and informal institutions in determining tax evasion finds empirical support in the data.     

Modeling Effort and Lobbying in a Heterogeneous Common Pool Resource Setting

Extraction from a common pool resource (CPR), such as a fishery, can lead to socially inefficient and undesirable outcomes as a result of appropriation problems. Through regulation of the CPR, users may achieve a more profitable and socially efficient outcome. Feeny et al. (Land Econ 72(2):187–205, 1996) delve into some of the assumptions made by traditional CPR models and how use of those assumptions provides an incomplete framework to guide fishery policy. In the theoretical models we develop, we relax two of those assumptions: CPR users are homogeneous and are unable to create, or influence, management of the resource. We note a case where regulation of the individual user can induce others to harvest more, and relate this to the slippage effect concept. Regarding resource sustainability, we document situations where incentives exist for CPR users to lobby for tighter regulations and thus increase profits by limiting the tragedy of the commons influence.     

员工地位竞争动机、知识分享行为与创新绩效——基于嵌入性悖论视角

组织中个体创新常常面临嵌入性悖论。相对于传统地位竞争的反功能视角，人们日益认识到地位竞争尤其是威望型地位竞争，可以为个体提供创新资源和动力。有效化解这一悖论，关键在于明晰何种类型的地位竞争以及何种程度的嵌入性可以促进个体创新。对一家大型多业务单元传媒集团227名员工进行实证调查，分析结果表明：威望型地位竞争可以通过促进个体知识分享行为提升个体创新绩效；非正式地位较低的个体更有可能具有威望型地位竞争动机；正式地位与非正式地位对个体地位竞争动机有交互影响，处于高正式地位的成员如果在非正式网络中处于边缘位置，则更可能在地位竞争中表现出威望型地位竞争动机。     

Microfinance spillovers: A model of competition in informal credit markets with an application to Indian villages

Despite widespread interest in the development of microfinance, spillover effects on the non-using population and redistributive issues remain largely unexplored. I study a competition game between microfinance institutions (MFIs) offering joint-liability loans and moneylenders offering individual loans in presence of adverse selection. I show that one unintended consequence of the entry of a microfinance sector in local credit markets can be to trigger an increase in the equilibrium informal interest rate, because MFIs tend to attract a disproportionately-safe share of the borrower pool away from incumbent moneylenders. The existence of such composition externality depends crucially on the size of the microfinance sector and the risk composition of the borrower pool. The model predicts a non-linearly increasing relationship between informal interest rates and MFIs' capacity in relatively safe credit markets, and no relationship in risky villages. I show evidence supporting these predictions, using a first-hand panel database that records all credit transactions over 8 years for a sample of about 1000 households living in Indian villages with extensive space and time variation in the size of their microfinance sector.     

Evaluating the participation of an ethnic minority group in informal employment: a product of exit or exclusion?

This paper critically evaluates competing explanations for the participation of ethnic minority groups in informal employment. These interpret their participation either through a structuralist lens arising out of ‘exclusion’ from formal employment or through a neo-liberal and/or post-structuralist lens driven by voluntary ‘exit’ from formal institutions. To evaluate critically these competing explanations, this paper reports a survey of the experiences of Pakistani immigrants in informal employment in Sheffield, including fifty face-to-face interviews and two focus groups. The findings highlight informal employment amongst this Pakistani ethnic minority group is neither universally driven by exclusion nor exit. Instead, some participate mostly due to exclusion, others mostly for exit rationales and some for a combination of the two, with different mixtures across different groups and types of informal employment. The outcome is a call for greater appreciation of the multifarious character of undeclared work and a move beyond simplistic explanations and policy responses.     

THE SHADOW ECONOMY: ILLICIT WORK AND HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION: A MICROANALYSIS OF WEST GERMANY

This microanalysis of the shadow economy is on informal family income achieving strategies. In particular we analyze both sexes' paid illicit work as well as unpaid work in household production based on the representative West German Sfb3–Secondary Occupation Survey 1984. We estimate the influence of various socioeconomic variables including a legal occupation. As a result, illicit work and household production "Do-It-Yourself" activities are important informal family income achieving strategies. The respective regional state of the formal economy or one's own activities in social networks is of greater importance for informal economic activities than an individual income from formal economic activities.     

Determinants of Enterprise Restructuring in Transition: Description of a Survey in Russian Industry

The survey described in this article collects data on enterprise restructuring, ownership, competition, budget constraints and, particularly, institutions in Russian industry, covering the period between the start of 1992 and September 1999. On their own, the survey answers show a devastating restructuring crisis, massive privatisation, rather weak competition, unexpectedly hard budget constraints, an overwhelmingly negative and relatively positive assessment of formal and informal institutions respectively, and largely the same ruling networks as before the start of market reforms. Ironically, tentative results based on this survey indicate that important determinants of enterprise restructuring in Russian industry are exactly those on which least reform has been accomplished: stronger competition and better institutions go with more restructuring, while privatisation and harder budget constraints do not. The substitution, to some extent, of informal for formal institutions may have prevented even worse restructuring figures, but better formal institutions in general would have led to further improvements.     

制度对区域技术创新的影响

利用2006—2011年我国31个省级行政单位的相关数据,采用分层回归分析方法探究正式制度和非正式制度对区域技术创新效率的影响。研究结果表明:研发投入对区域技术创新有显著的积极影响;正式制度和非正式制度正向调节研发投入与区域技术创新的关系,即正式制度和非正式制度更完善的地区的研发投入对区域技术创新的促进作用更强。     

正规金融与非正规金融合作会提高农户期望收益吗?——理论分析和实证检验

文章区分三种不同的市场结构从理论上分析了农户、正规金融机构和非正规金融机构三个主体的决策行为和期望收益,认为只有在正规金融部门与非正规金融部门共存且实现合作的市场中,农户的融资需求才能得到有效满足,农户的期望收益才能最大化。文章还利用遍布我国东、中、西部地区近10 000家农户的实地调研数据进行实证检验,为建立正规金融与非正规金融间的合作机制提供了经验证据。     

The effect of political volatility on capital markets in EU accession and neighborhood countries

Political instability has the potential to disrupt financial markets. But how do political institutions affect financial movements in an environment where all institutions are in flux? This paper looks at the effects of formal and informal political volatility in the new EU countries of central and eastern Europe, in the Eastern Neighborhood, and farther afield in Central Asia to answer this question. Using asymmetric GARCH modeling on monthly data, I find that informal political volatility has a significant negative effect on stock returns, while formal political institutions generate much higher financial volatility than changes in monetary policy.