Property rights in land and output growth in Russia

This paper tests whether the implementation of a key market‐oriented reform in post‐Soviet Russia, property rights in land, proxied by the percent of privatized land by region, affected the pace of sub‐national economic growth during two unprecedented expansion periods: 2001–2008 and 2010–2014. Individuals gained the Constitutional right to own land in 1993, but implementation was stalled. The pace of land privatization can be explained by arguably exogenous factors such as distance to Moscow, as well as climate and also regional political culture, proxied by concentration of votes in the 2004 presidential election. We show that this rate of land privatization in Russia's regions was significantly associated with output growth in 2010–2014, confirming the policy importance of this measure for developing economies. Regions where private holdings expanded most rapidly with the enforcement of property rights in land, gained a competitive advantage in the growth process through increased investment in fixed assets and private consumption.     

农业地租的动态非均衡分析

资本有机构成和地权流转等因素一旦发生变化,马克思农业地租模型的结论就需要重新审视.在坚持劳动价值论和生产价格理论的基础上,运用动态非均衡分析工具,把剩余价值、资本有机构成、地权流转等变量内生化,试图建立起农业绝对地租与级差地租的动态非均衡一般分析框架.     

Urban squatting and community organization in developing countries

It is estimated that up to 30–35 percent of the total urban population of the Third World (about 185 million people) live in squatter settlements. This paper presents, from an economic perspective of tenure choice under uncertainty, a unified and consistent theoretical framework of this phenomenon, which has heretofore been studied mainly by other social scientists. The model is able to explain why land invasions occur. Furthermore, it provides some insights as to why the number of squatters in an urban area depends on a squatter community's ability to form coalitions to fully protect its members' rights. It is shown in the paper that, if a community is successful in controlling its size, government efforts which are meant to reduce the number of squatters may lead to the opposite results. In particular, the imposition of heavier fines or the increase of government expenditures on eviction activity (threat campaigns, eviction in other jurisdictions, etc.) will likely lead to an increase in the optimal number of squatters, unless the decline in expected utility caused by these efforts is so great that squatting no longer becomes viable at any community size.     

The composition of foreign capital stocks in South Africa: The role of institutions,domestic risk and neighbourhood effects

Foreign capital inflows are an important source of funds to finance investment in developing economies. International finance literature is therefore concerned with how institutional factors like property rights and corruption affect foreign capital inflows. We investigate the determinants of the absolute volumes and composition of foreign capital stocks in South Africa, focusing on the role played by institutional quality (property rights), domestic default risk and neighbourhood effects as potential determinants. The empirical results show that secure property rights and low default risk in the host country positively affect the absolute volumes of both long-term foreign capital and short-term foreign capital, but tilt the composition in favour of long-term foreign capital. Empirical results also demonstrate the existence of neighbourhood effects where the institutional environment in Zimbabwe significantly impacts on South Africa's foreign capital inflows. In this regard, weak property rights in Zimbabwe lead to an increase in South Africa's foreign direct investment (FDI), but a reduction in South Africa's portfolio investment. This suggests that Zimbabwe and South Africa compete for foreign direct investment in similar sectors, and present two alternative investment destinations to foreign investors. By contrast, weak property rights in Zimbabwe appear to raise the perceived risk for portfolio investment in South Africa.     

Private Wealth in a Developing Country:Evidence from South Africa

The point of departure of Piketty's influential Capital in the Twenty‐First Century (2014) was the dramatic growth of private wealth‐income ratios in advanced economies between 1970 and 2010. Using official balance sheet data for South Africa—the first country to publish such data in the developing world—, this paper examines to what extent this re‐emergence of private wealth was also experienced in the developing‐country context. First, we find that the South African current wealth‐income ratio is very close to its 1975 level, and much lower than those of Piketty's sample of advanced economies. Second, we show that the discrepancy is explained not only by South Africa's relatively low savings rates, but also by the reduction of wealth before and during the transition to democracy in the 1990s. Since then, private wealth recovered significantly, but the U‐shaped relationship does not support the argument that there is a clear correlation between the capital‐income ratio and capital share.     

产权、代理成本和代理效率

本文选择政府管制较少、竞争较为充分的电子电器行业作为研究对象,考察了产权制度与代理成本和代理效率的关系,得到以下结论:(1)在代理成本上,国有产权企业普遍高于混和产权企业,混和产权企业高于个人产权企业;在代理成本差异上,混和产权企业与个人产权企业的差异小于与国有产权企业的差异。(2)长期投资率和职工人数与代理成本呈显著正相关关系,而长期投资率、财务杠杆比率、职工人数等与代理效率呈显著负相关关系。(3)企业规模越大,不同产权的代理成本差异越小;反之代理成本差异越大。(4)随着市场竞争程度的提高,各类产权企业的代理成本都呈现下降趋势,其代理效率呈现提高趋势。我们研究的启示是国有企业改革的突破口应考虑如何降低其代理成本,解决的措施之一是产权改革,尤其是产权多元化的改革,其次是完善对投资和负债及冗员的监督和控制机制,以促进代理成本的降低和代理效率的提高。     

Agricultural intensification, irrigation and the environment in South Asia: Issues and policy options

High population pressure and the rapid pace of human activity including urbanization, industrialization and other economic activities have led to a dwindling supply of arable land per capita and a process of agricultural intensification in South Asia. While this process has significantly increased food production to feed the growing population, it has also entailed considerable damage to the physical environment, including degradation and depletion of natural resources and unsustainable use of land and water resources. This paper employs the analytical tools of economic theory, environmental and ecological economics to model the impact of irrigation in South Asia. It underscores the need for an eclectic approach to policy responses stemming from private and common property rights theories, externality theory and sustainability theory with a view to environmentalizing agricultural development.     

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.     

产权管制放松与制度绩效变迁——来自广东经济非均衡转轨的证据

过去大量的研究强调政策、区域、禀赋等对广东经济转轨绩效的影响,论文从产权管制放松的角度出发,构建了一个简单的博弈论模型,旨在分析广东政府放松对资源配置权利的管制对经济转轨产生的制度效应。研究发现,广东各级地方政府放松对资源配置权利的管制,大幅节约了租金耗散,并衍生出更多给予经济个体发挥比较优势的获利空间,扩展了市场范围,从而促进了地区经济均衡转轨。论文对于理解广东经济转轨问题提供了一个新的视角和框架,它尤其有助于揭示产权管制放松与经济绩效变迁二者之间的内在机理和制度逻辑。     

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。     

复杂产权论和有效产权论-中国地权变迁的一个分析框架

本文将中国近60年的地权变迁过程分为合作化、家庭联产承包和土地规模流转三个阶段加以回顾,考察了其中发生的产权权能细分、主体身份变化、市场范围扩展和经济绩效变动等几个特征性事实,并以一个基于Spence-Dixit-Stigliz框架的模型刻画了从传统自给性农业向现代商业化农业转型过程中的地权细分和流转交易,从而为复杂产权理论提供了一个经验证据,并揭示出产权细分是复杂产权实际实施的一个重要途径,因而不存在绝对有效的产权安排,只能在状态依存的互动过程中寻求相对有效的产权结构。     

Postsocialist privatization and agency-related property: from Coase to Locke

Differing concepts of private property and the state (Hobbes, Locke, and Smith) are discussed on an abstract level as well as to their relevance regarding transition in the countries of Soviet socialism. This discussion provides arguments to support the following claim: to gain an adequate understanding of what privatization means in the context of Eastern European reforms, it is essential to use models of thought which (1) relate property rights to agency and production and (2) treat political, judicial, organizational and spontaneous processes of establishing and enforcing rights as endogenous elements of the analysis. This would imply that for an attempt to conceptualize ‘transition’ and ‘privatization’, traditional neoclassical analysis might be misleading: it treats private property rights (‘endowments’) as related to exchange only and holds that they exhibit no patterns which are relevant to the analysis of a market society. It treats them as exogenous and hence arbitrary.     

Insecurity of property rights and social matching in the tenancy market

This paper shows that insecurity of property rights over agricultural land can have large efficiency and equity costs because of the way it affects matching in the tenancy market. A principal-agent framework is used to model the landlord's decision to rent when he takes into account the risk of losing the land to the tenant and when contract enforcement is decreasing in social distance with the tenant. These effects are quantified for the case of local land rental markets in the Dominican Republic. Results show that insecure property rights lead to matching in the tenancy market along socio-economic lines, severely limiting the size of the rental market and the choice of tenants for landlords, both with efficiency costs. Social segmentation reduces access to land for the rural poor, with high equity costs. Simulations suggest that improving tenure security would increase rental transactions by 21% and the area rented to the poor by 63%. Increased property rights security is hence beneficial not only to asset owners, but also to those with whom they might interact in the market.     

Breaking up the collective farms

The de‐collectivization of Vietnamese agriculture was a crucial step in the country's transition to a market economy. The assignment of land‐use rights had to be decentralized and local cadres ostensibly had the power to capture this process. We assess the realized land allocation against explicit counter‐factuals. Depending on the region, we find that 95–99 percent of maximum aggregate consumption was realized by a land allocation that generated lower inequality overall, with the poorest absolutely better off. We attribute this outcome to initial conditions at the time of reform and actions by the centre to curtail the power of local elites.     

Private Property Rights,Investment Patterns,and Asset Structure

The right to private property was first written into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China in March 2004. This study takes advantage of the 2004 amendment and uses a difference‐in‐differences approach to empirically test the impact of private property rights security on investment patterns and thereby on asset structure. Employing the Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database from 2000 to 2007 to implement the analysis, we find that private property rights security has not only led enterprises to boost investment in both fixed assets and intangible assets but also induced them to allocate available resources more towards intangible assets. We address two potential concerns about our empirical design.     

产权约束、投资低效与通货紧缩

本文从产权逻辑来诠释 2 0 0 3年以来的投资膨胀。文章认为 ,在土地转让权含糊不清和银行产权约束不力的背景下 ,土地和信贷市场的价格机制无法给出市场定价 ,客观造成了巨大套利空间的存在。当经济景气时 ,一些地方政府、企业和银行三方共谋土地和贷款这两种最关键的生产要素 ,从而导致投资的非理性膨胀 ,并通过金融加速器效应带来宏观经济的大幅波动。从根源上讲 ,过度投资和投资低效的本质是产权约束和地方政府政绩观导向的问题。因而 ,本文提出的相应政策含义是 ,在短期内主要以经济杠杆来控制总量 ;在中长期应转变政府职能 ,推进产权改革。     

Loss of economic rents in the global fishery

Most of the world’s ocean fisheries are severely lacking in private property rights in the underlying natural resources or their close complements (e.g. harvesting volume). Therefore, according to standard property rights theory, these fisheries should be highly wasteful of potential economic rents from these resources. The question is whether this economic loss can be empirically verified and, if so, how large it is. This paper explains the concept and develops the analytical theory of economic and natural rents. Building on this and utilizing global fisheries data, the paper proceeds to estimate a global fisheries model, obtain numerical estimates of the rent loss in the world’s ocean capture fisheries and provide reasonable confidence bounds for this loss. It is found that the global fisheries rent loss constitutes almost certainly a large fraction of the landed value of the global landings. The mean estimate of this loss is well over 50% of the value of landings.     

Property rights on First Nations reserve land

This paper examines the economic effects of existing private property rights on First Nations reserves. We focus on three regimes of land tenure: lawful possession, designated land and permits. These land regimes have been used to create individual landholdings and grant secure and transferable rights of use of reserve land. Using confidential census microdata and rich administrative data, we find evidence of a positive relationship between the use of these tenure regimes and homeownership rates, housing conditions and band's public spending. We also observe a positive relationship with average income. However, this last result is driven by the inflow of a non-Indigenous population not by improvements in Indigenous households’ income or on-reserve employment. Our findings thus suggest that while reforms to individual property rights on reserve have some positive effects, their scope remains limited and they are unlikely to constitute a transformative tool to alleviate poverty on reserve.     

为什么土地流转中会出现无偿转包——基于产权风险视角的分析

土地流转是实施乡村振兴战略、实现农业农村现代化的重要条件。然而在土地流转过程中却出现了较多无偿转包现象，这反映了我国土地流转制度存在着非正规现象。本文通过理论和实证分析，对无偿转包现象产生的原因及其影响因素进行了研究，并得出以下基本结论：第一，无偿转包能够规避土地流转中的产权风险。第二，转出户能够获得的潜在地租越低，转出户的非农化程度越高，或转出户对亲朋好友信任程度越高，无偿转包的情况就越有可能发生。