Der Stand der Neuen Institutionsökonomik

Die Neue Institutionenökonomik stellt ergänzend zur Neoklassik die Kosten von Transaktionen in den Mittelpunkt. Dabei wird das Hauptaugenmerk auf die Institutionen gerichtet, die das menschliche Handeln beeinflussen. Welche Entwicklung nahm die Institutionenökonomik? Wo steht sie heute? --

Institutional Analysis of Legal Change: The Case of Corporate Governance in China

During the last three decades, China has undergone a period of unprecedented institutional change. The gradual market transition of the economy and China’s integration into the WTO have created a strong demand for new laws and regulations. For institutional economics this period provides a unique opportunity to study the qualities, implications, and driving forces of distinct legal arrangements and their impact on economic development in transition economies. Empirical research not only provides insight into China’s emerging legal system, it also promises important feedback effects for the field of institutional economics. In this Essay we argue that meaningful analysis of legal change in transition economies, such as China’s, must look beyond change of law in the books; it requires analysis of institutional frameworks that shape social behavior, which in turn explain the effectiveness of changes in the law. Using the example of corporate governance, we show that changes in the law have not sufficiently been matched by changes in institutional conditions, explaining why, in spite of far-reaching judicial reform, Chinese corporate governance still displays significant weaknesses in practice

Entrepreneurs Under Uncertainty: An Economic Experiment in China

This study reports findings from the first large-scale experiment investigating whether entrepreneurs differ 1 from other people in their willingness to expose themselves to various forms of uncertainty. A stratified random sample of 700 chief executive officers from the Yangzi delta region in China is compared to 200 control group members. Our findings suggest that in economic decisions, entrepreneurs are more willing to accept strategic uncertainty related to multilateral competition and trust. However, entrepreneurs do not differ from ordinary people when it comes to nonstrategic forms of uncertainty, such as risk and ambiguity

Developmental State and Corporate Governance in China

China’s state-guided economic miracle has revitalized a long-standing and unsettled debate about the role of government in transformative economic development. In a firm-level study of corporate governance we examine whether direct state involvement actually makes a positive contribution to the economic performance of newly incorporated firms in China’s urban economy. We show that direct intervention into the governance of firms is likely to yield negative economic effects at the firm level. We infer from our findings that it must be other types of government intervention external to the firm that explain the success of China’s developmental state in promoting rapid economic growth

Political economy of labor retrenchment : evidence based on China\u27s state-owned enterprises

This study examines the determinants behind the restructuring of China\u27s SOEs in the late 1990s. We have reached two major findings. First, we find that the degree of labor retrenchment is negatively related to enterprise performance, suggesting that poor performance is a major force driving labor restructuring. Second, we offer evidence that decisions on labor retrenchment in traditional SOEs are related to the local government\u27s fiscal position and to local reemployment conditions for laid-off workers. In contrast, labor decisions in corporatized SOEs are not related to these two variables. Our results suggest that corporatized SOEs with partial private ownership may enjoy higher autonomy in labor decisions

Menschenrechte und die Globalisierung der Wirtschaft - Konflikt oder Chance?

Menschenrechte und die Globalisierung der Wirtschaft - Konflikt oder Chance

Network effects, cooperation and entrepreneurial innovation in China

The rapid rise of an innovative private manufacturing economy in China challenges standard economic explanations of growth, which typically assume the existence of well-defined formal institutions such as property rights and company laws safeguarding investor and creditor interests. We highlight the social structure of cooperation that enables innovative activity in private manufacturing firms when formal property rights protection remains weak. We show how network effects linked to inter-firm cooperation in industrial clusters allowed private entrepreneurs to quickly develop reliable business norms to reduce the inherent risk of malfeasance and contract breach in formal and informal collaborative efforts. Survey data from a sample of 700 manufacturing firms located in China’s Yangzi Delta region confirms that both formal and informal types of inter-firm collaboration are effective, though in different areas of innovative activity

Trust in difficult people: a social network perspective

We all know people we find difficult to deal with. Some we trust despite major past transgressions, others we do not. What explains the difference? Rather than looking for explanations inside the trustor–trustee dyad, we focus on the embedding social structure. Our argument focuses on two features: network closure around the trustor and the embeddedness of the difficult contact. We test and confirm our argument using data from 384 Chinese managers. Our results show that managers who cite colleagues as difficult following a major transgression report higher trust the more the difficult contact is embedded within the manager’s network. The effect is smaller (larger) if the manager is surrounded by a rather closed (open) social network. At a practical level, our study helps distinguish between social situations that facilitate trust and those that impede trust once interpersonal conflicts have tainted a relationship