Pampered Bureaucracy,Political Stability and Trade Integration

This paper examines the effect of trade integration and comparative advantage on one of a country's institutions, which in turn influences its economic efficiency. The environment we explore is one in which a country's lower classes may revolt and appropriate wealth owned by a ruling elite. The elite can avert revolution by incentivizing a potentially productive middle class to sink their human capital into a relatively unproductive bureaucracy. Thus the bureaucracy serves as an institution through which the elite can credibly commit to make transfers to the rest of society, but in the process this reduces economic efficiency. Trade integration alters the relative value of the elite's wealth. This alters the lower classes’ incentive to revolt on the one hand and the elite's incentive to subsidize participation in the inefficient bureaucracy on the other. Therefore, the interaction between a country's comparative advantage and an inefficient economic institution determines whether trade integration increases or reduces economic efficiency. The econometric findings support the model's main prediction.     

Development and inefficient regulation under the threat of revolution

This paper considers a model of strategic interaction between a rent-seeking elite ruling class and a disenfranchised working class, whose ability to revolt constrains the elite’s choice of economic institutions. The disenfranchised are imperfectly informed about the economy’s productive capacity, an asymmetry which the elite may exploit to implement distortionary economic regulations to create rent in excess of that which can be generated in a relatively more efficient manner. Our main result is that, the manner in which the elite will extract rent depends on the economy’s level of development. We demonstrate that below a threshold development level the elite choose relatively inefficient regulation and above the threshold development level the elite choose relatively efficient taxation.     

Infrastructural change and secular economic development

Long-term economic development is determined by changes to the infrastructure, especially material and non-material infrastructural networks that link agents in different locations. The infrastructure consists of the slowly changing, collective arena that supports production, exchange, and consumption, such as the built environment, transport networks, and institutions. In the short run the infrastructure can be regarded as fixed. Changes to the infrastructure are under normal conditions small enough to be disregarded by producers and consumers. With the creation of a critical link of a network, there will however be a revolutionary restructuring of the arena. Critical links are here defined as additions to infrastructural networks that create opportunities for new information and transport flows between previously unconnected regions. Such a revolutionary restructuring of infrastructural networks has been called a logistical revolution. Certain institutional pre-conditions are necessary for a logistical revolution, while the creation of a critical link is both a necessary and a sufficient condition. This paper discusses the three logistical revolutions that occurred in the 13th century, around 1600, and in the 19th century, which each had crucial similarities with the current “information revolution.”     

Women,Real Estate,and Wealth in a Southern US County, 1780–1860

Abstract

In her 1986 book Women and the Law of Property in Early America, Marylynn Salmon concludes that the legal and economic changes experienced by early national and antebellum (pre–Civil War) United States women – which culminated in the passage of married women's property acts – were evolutionary rather than revolutionary. This paper examines changes in the economic status of women preceding the enactment of these statutes by analyzing new and valuable information: real-estate deeds and probate records in Henrico County, Virginia. Supplementing the diverse, yet limited, international and historical evidence on women's wealth holdings, this exploration of the asset accumulation of elite, free women in the southern US reveals that women's property holdings, personal and real, rose substantially over the 1780–1860 period. Thus, these results are consistent with those of other scholars, such as Marylynn Salmon, who document an increase in early national and antebellum women's economic status.     

Dynamic enfranchisement

Why would an enfranchised elite voluntarily dilute its power by expanding the franchise? The central intuition behind our analysis is that the dilution of power by an enfranchised elite is equivalent to the delegation of power by one member of the elite—a pivotal voter—to another citizen, who in turn becomes the pivotal voter in the new (expanded) elite. Such delegation might be useful if it allows the current pivotal voter to credibly commit to future policy choices. The current pivotal voter realizes that the agent to whom authority is delegated will face similar incentives to subsequently transfer power, and this effect tempers the extent to which the franchise is extended. We develop a recursive, infinite horizon model that generates the possibility of gradual franchise expansion. We show that, in equilibrium, expansion occurs if and only if the private decisions of the citizenry have a net positive spillover to the dynamic payoff of the current pivotal voter. The class of games we study can accommodate a number of proposed explanations for franchise extension, including the threat of insurrection, and ideological or class conflict within the elite.     

Populist policies in the transition to democracy

This paper develops a political economy model that provides an explanation as for why ruling elites in oligarchic societies may rely on income redistribution to the poor (the masses) in order to prevent them from attempting a revolution. We refer to this kind of redistribution as populist redistribution because, first it does not increase the poor's productive capacity (human capital), and second it seeks to “buy” political support (peace) to perpetuate the elite's control of political power. We examine the conditions under which ruling elites choose to deter the poor (by means of military repression and/or populist redistribution), to engage in a dispute with the poor for the control of political power, or, alternatively, to extend democracy. According to the results of the model populist redistribution (or military repression), if any, increases with initial wealth inequality and with the amount of redistribution that the poor can undertake under democracy, and decreases with the relative importance of a human capital externality in production. The model explains why in some cases the use of an apparently inefficient policy of populist redistribution turns out to be optimal for both groups (the ruling elite and the poor class) when the alternative is the use of military repression or default to conflict.     

Mass protests,security-elite defection,and revolution

Political regimes will survive even intense mass protests as long as the security elite abstains from defecting. However, empirical and theoretical work has shown that coups, as the active form of security-elite defection, become more likely under mass protests. Still, many regimes collapsed under mass protests without a coup ever happening. In these no-coup situations, we demonstrate, using case studies, that the security elite did in fact abandon loyalty to the regime, albeit in a passive fashion. We develop a model that explains why mass protests can induce the security-elite members to coordinate on passive security-elite defection, thus paving the way for a full-fledged revolution. With our model, we work out the parameters under which passive security-elite defection is likely. Finally, by systematically relating our model to our cases, we demonstrate how mass protests triggered security-elite defection in a number of particular historical cases of revolution.     

“哥白尼革命”新解一二

作为一个科学史现象,"哥白尼革命"存在很多争议。随着科学技术哲学及科学史的研究深入,文章遵循如此学理:实在论与工具论哲学的新争论;哥白尼所体现的现代精神与科学家气质;事件所激荡的社会、文化影响,对"哥白尼革命"进行重新界定、重新整合、重新解析。     

On the timing of political regime changes in resource-dependent economies

We consider a resource-dependent economy initially ruled by the elite. The transition from the autocratic to a more democratic regime takes place only if the citizens decide to revolt against the elite. The occurrence of a revolution primarily depends on the autocratic regime vulnerability and the level of inequalities, both being driven by the elite׳s redistribution and repression policies. First, we show that when a political transition is inevitable, the elite choose the maximum rate of redistribution to lengthen their period in office. Second, we find that the duration of the autocratic regime is linked to resource abundance, and how it relates to the elite׳s policies. More resources lead to a shorter reign of a redistributive regime, which may not be the case of a repressive regime. Finally, we interpret the Arab spring sequence in light of our findings.     

Evolutionary Aspects of Corporate Concentration and Its Implications for Economic Theory and Policy

Thorstein Veblen's class analysis implicitly was a critique of the class analysis of some Marxists, who reduced the interdependence of economic base and ideological superstructure to a causal link from the former to the latter. Veblen's emphasis on the directive to take culture into account occurs later in Antonio Gramsci's theoretical innovations: namely, class struggle for cultural hegemony and the importance of the organic intellectual as ferment for class emergence. Gramsci was experiencing the mass movement of fascism, and the (now) classic analysis of social classes became an urgently needed extension to explain class evolution. Today, capitalism is in deep crisis once again. This paper argues that the drivers of the next revolutionary upheaval will, once more, be the social classes — particularly, the newly emerging ones. We graft ideas of Veblen onto concepts suggested by Gramsci to enhance the theoretical toolbox necessary to understand contemporary global class dynamics.     

The economic contribution of information technology: Towards comparative and user studies

By what process does technical change in information technology (IT) increase economic welfare? How does this process result in increases in welfare at different rates in different countries and regions? This paper considers existing literature on measuring the economic benefits from information technology, emphasizing comparative issues and user studies. Following Bresnahan and Trajtenberg (1995), we call the invention associated with customizing the technological frontier to the unique needs of users in particular regions “co-invention”, placing emphasis on understanding how its determinants vary across users in different regions. We develop a framework for understanding the processes behind value-creation, demand-side heterogeneity and co-inventive activity. Then we discuss why these processes make measuring the welfare benefits from advances in information technology particularly difficult. We highlight the metrics currently available for measuring the economic pay-out of the IT revolution and identify which of these vary meaningfully in a comparative regional context. Finally, we finish with observations about further areas of research.     

Information, organization, and freedom: Explaining the great reversal

We suggest, in a Coase-Demsetz perspective, that the social demand for individual rights??or freedoms (whether civil, political or economic)??is derived from, because complementary to, the changing size of hierarchical organizations. The general downsizing and decentralization process observed worldwide after 1975 is itself the result of the information revolution and the resulting abundance of information. It follows that social demand for freedoms depends in turn??and inversely??on the cost of information (and thus on market imperfection) as well as on traditional determinants such as the distribution of resources and human capital. This implies that freedoms are adopted, implemented, or ??produced?? by various political regimes according to an objectively observable and contingent determinant. We believe this approach can shed light on the reason for the waxing and waning of freedoms in modern history.     

Agricultural Productivity Growth and Escape from the Malthusian Trap

Industrialization allowed the industrialized world of today to escape from the Malthusian regime characterized by low economic and population growth and to enter the post-Malthusian regime of high economic and population growth. To explain the transition between these regimes, we construct a growth model with two consumption goods (an agricultural and a manufacturing good), endogenous fertility, and endogenous technological progress in the manufacturing sector. We show that with an exogenous increase in the growth of agricultural productivity our model is able to replicate stylized facts of the British industrial revolution. The paper concludes by illustrating that our proposed model framework can be extended to include the demographic transition, i.e., a regime in which economic growth is associated with falling fertility.     

技术变化与收入分配

本文以20世纪70年代的信息技术革命为背景，运用美国商务部经济统计局生产率数据库，在此较五，六十年代和七、八十年代工资结构的基础上，提出了一个简单的技术变化模型。通过模型以及与经验观察相一致的实证研究，指出技术变化引起工人工资不平等的两种渠道；直接的途径是对于既定的资本劳动力比率来说，新技术能生产更多的产量；间接的途径是资本从非技能工人流向技能工人，从而使得前者的人均资本在技术变化前变得更少，本文的结论是：运用革命性的新技术对传统行业进行改造，构成了经济增长的最终主体，人力资本水平之高低越来越影响到最终经济的财富的总量。     

The status of biotehnology-based innovation

This paper contributes to the debate surrounding the question of whether biotechnology, particularly its applications in agricultural and food-related industries, should be regarded as revolutionary or evolutionary (with some reservations about the vaildity of teh question). The potential to create a revolutionary techno-economic paradigm shift does exist but it is currently systems. It is also important to consider the motivations underlying statements about the revolutionary/ evolutionary nature of biotechnology, as some such statements are intended to influence events rather than to reflect them. The impact of small firms on the direction and place of revolutionary change in these industries is likely to be marginal, unlike the situation in the early phases of teh electronics/IT revolution. At present the lack of integration of policy initiatives by national governments and the EC is a major factor discouraging the rapid implementation of change.     

The status of biotehnology-based innovation

This paper contributes to the debate surrounding the question of whether biotechnology, particularly its applications in agricultural and food-related industries, should be regarded as revolutionary or evolutionary (with some reservations about the vaildity of teh question). The potential to create a revolutionary techno-economic paradigm shift does exist but it is currently systems. It is also important to consider the motivations underlying statements about the revolutionary/ evolutionary nature of biotechnology, as some such statements are intended to influence events rather than to reflect them. The impact of small firms on the direction and place of revolutionary change in these industries is likely to be marginal, unlike the situation in the early phases of teh electronics/IT revolution. At present the lack of integration of policy initiatives by national governments and the EC is a major factor discouraging the rapid implementation of change.     

Aid effectiveness: the role of the local elite

We study the importance of the local elite as a determinant of the effectiveness of foreign aid in developing countries. The local elite serves as an intermediary between aid donors and aid recipients through its control of the government and major firms. The likelihood of misusing aid is large if the elite is characterized by extensive economic and political power and little concern for social groups besides itself. To determine which countries have this type of elite we use a historically determined variable: the percentage of European settlers in total population in colonial times. We provide strong empirical evidence that the level of European settlement in colonial times is negatively related to the effectiveness of foreign aid as measured in a growth-regression framework. Our results are robust to the inclusion of a wide set of alternative explanatory factors advanced in the aid effectiveness literature.     

推动腐屑资源利用促进循环经济发展

循环经济思想是当前促进国民经济与生态环境健康协调发展的重要指导思想。推动腐屑资源利用是循环经济思想在农业领域的重要实现途径。腐屑资源利用符合大农业体系的基本框架,而大农业体系又是全部农业范畴与循环经济思想的有机结合。我们应构建腐屑生态体系,促进循环经济发展,迎接新的历史性的农业变革。     

Institutions and growth in limited access societies

We build a dynamic political economy model with a two-class society, workers and the elite, in which the elite formation, the innovation rate and fiscal policy are endogenous. The model generates a mapping between institutions and patterns of growth consistent with empirical evidence. Ex ante, when facing constraints in choosing institutions, the elite may delegate policy control to some of its members, even though such delegation exacerbates the conflict within the elite and causes policy failures. Committing to such institutional arrangements prevents more harmful outcomes, such as rapid entry and subsequent deterioration of the elite?s economic and political power.