Marrying in the Cathedral: a Framework for the Analysis of Corporate Governance

The firm can be seen as a centralization of market transactions and as a decentralization of a public ordering which allows the management of joint liabilities. The paper advances the view that the main reason for the firm’s existence is the unification and the internalization of liabilities. From this perspective, Coase's and Fuller's contributions to the theory of the firm can be married within the architecture of Calabresi's Cathedral. Because of specific (dis)investments, fundamental transformations from competition to managed bilateral monopoly take place either in the public or the private sphere and provide an explanation for the ultimate nature of the firm

Coasean economics and the evolution of marine property in Hawaii

The standard view that the absence of property rights is inefficient contradicts the Coasean proposition that the relative efficiency of different institutions depends on their ability to economize on transaction costs. Moreover, the comparative theory of open access and private property institutions fails to recognize the intermediate institution of common property, finesses dynamic optimization, and provides an incomplete account of governance. We provide a comparative statics framework for alternative modes of resource management, albeit one that allows for dynamic optimization, and show that open access can be efficient under conditions of low population pressure. We show that the intensification of production with population pressure in Hawaii co- evolved with specialization and increased governance, in accordance with the efficiency theory. Instead of market-based specialization, however, economic organization in pre-contact Hawaii was hierarchically determined via top-down management of the ahupua´a.Demsetz, property rights, Hawaiian history, specialization, decentralization

Coasean Economics and the Evolution of Marine Property in Hawaii

The standard view that the absence of property rights is inefficient contradicts the Coasean proposition that the relative efficiency of different institutions depends on their ability to economize on transaction costs. Moreover, the comparative theory of open access and private property institutions fails to recognize the intermediate institution of common property, finesses dynamic optimization, and provides an incomplete account of governance. We provide a comparative statics framework for alternative modes of resource management, albeit one that allows for dynamic optimization, and show that open access can be efficient under conditions of low population pressure. We show that the intensification of production with population pressure in Hawaii co-evolved with specialization and increased governance, in accordance with the efficiency theory. Instead of market-based specialization, however, economic organization in pre-contact Hawaii was hierarchically determined via top-down management of the ahupua´a.Demsetz, property rights, Hawaiian history, specialization, decentralization

The Human Face of Resource Conflict: Property and Power in Nigeria

This paper considers possible answers to these difficult questions by focusing on two issues: the evolution of legal norms in response to both endogenous and exogenous changes, and the role that African customary law and indigenous dispute resolution has played in promoting coordination and cooperation among group members, thereby reducing violent conflict. This paper explores legislative actions taken by the Nigerian government that impede the continued evolution of these relatively elastic customary legal norms. Property norms under customary Nigerian law were flexible enough to provide a wide variety of property rights and allow for the peaceful trading and reasonable protection of these rights, all at relatively low cost. In addition, accessible indigenous dispute-resolution mechanisms provided access to leaders with substantial local knowledge of local property rights arrangements. This paper also examines Nigeria\u27s customary land use rules for dealing with strangers, and considers how these provisions have reduced transactional costs and aligned expectations about property norms

The Rise of China as an Economic Power

In the twenty years since the Cultural Revolution, China has maintained fast real growth. This occurred despite China having similar problems to other transitional economies, eg loss-making State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), eroding fiscal revenues and inflation, (Section 3). Although China initially adopted the Soviet central planning model, after the 1950s break Chinese planning changed towards a regionally-based system with local planning (Section 2). In contrast to the centrally-based, functionally-specialized (U form or unitary structure) Soviet model, the Chinese-economy is organized on a multi-layer-multi-regional (M form) basis. This encouraged development of small size township and village enterprises (TVEs), the main engine of Chinese growth. Power and control remained with the Party and the State, but was diffused much more widely, regionally and locally. This allowed initiatives at lower (political) levels to establish institutions, both in agriculture (the 'household responsibility system') and industry (TVEs), without state protection. Even among regionally controlled SOEs, 'tournament rivalry' between regions, etc, and between SOEs and TVEs provided competition.

Informal economic activity: Early thinking, conceptual shifts, continuing patterns and persistent issues - a Michigan study

In this paper we review theoretical perspectives on the informal economy that developed during the period 1958–1992. We describe shifts in thinking in two phases that we identify as =first wave studies‘ and =second wave studies,‘ and we identify a series of critical theoretical issues that emerged from the thinking during these periods. Then, focusing on the state of Michigan, USA, we examine empirical research that was conducted in the second wave and compare the results with a state survey that we conducted in 2005. The overall aim of this paper is to summarize the extent of theoretical and empirical studies of informal economy before the more recent postmodern informed analysis of the 1990s, and to document shifts in patterns of informal economic activity as this is revealed from the research. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and empirical questions that have begun to be addressed in the last 15 years of what has now been 50 years of research on this topic

Community currencies as laboratories of institutional learning: emergence of governance through the mediation of social value

This paper is motivated by a long-standing curiosity about the role of scale in explanatory theories of socio-economic action. Introducing scale as an analytical variable implies the coexistence of individuals alongside institutions. We make the case that economic activity becomes more sustainable when it is ‘colonized’ by ‘social value’ whereby market activity is complemented with community and democratic values, by which we mean the opposite of the commodification of e.g. social networks analytics. We take the Sardex mutual credit system as an empirical context from which to begin exploring the extent to which such community-based economic practices offer a democratic and social alternative to, a questionable substitute for, or a functional supplement to the capitalist market, the welfare state, and public enterprises administered by state bureaucracies. We broach critically the emergence of institutional collective structures from the perspective of social constructivism, post- anarchist theory, economic anthropology, and post-capitalist studies of economic action. In particular, we focus on how Graeber’s ideas on the history of debt apply to these points. We propose a recursive constructive framework for socio-economic action whereby money as a social construction is itself a medium of economic construction and, as such, becomes an important lever subject to “design” inputs by socio-economic stakeholders engaged in the development of an inclusive and participatory governance process of institution construction