Property rights in China are moving in two different directions. In some villages, private rights are secure and to some degree marketable; in other villages, individual rights are increasingly restricted and suject to more regulation and reallocation. Administrative reallocation tends to promote more equal access to land, but the price paid for the social insurance of land tenure may be forgone investment.
Property rights in China are moving in two different directions. In some villages, private rights are secure and to some degree marketable; in other villages, individual rights are increasingly restricted and subject to more regulation and reallocation. Administrative reallocation tends to promote more equal access to land, but the price paid for the social insurance of land tenure may be forgone investment.Under communal farm production, there was little incentive to work hard: the communal system guaranteed a livelihood, and there were few private gains from additional efforts. The reform that introduced the household responsibility system in China in the early 1980s sharpened individual work incentives by assigning specific plots and the rights to residual income to individual households.However, the household responsibility system left unresolved questions about the reallocation of land over time - questions that have become increasingly important (for both efficiency and equity) with the rapid growth of the non-farm economy.The authors use household and village data to show that the initially egalitarian distribution of land is becoming more dispersed over time.In what has become a hybrid property rights system, in some areas local village leaders (the cadre) were empowered to periodically redistribute land between households on the basis of economic and demographic changes among households. In other villages, households were granted much greater immunity against redistribution of any sort.Similarly, villages differed in the degree to which individual households could trade land among themselves. Some villages did not regulate the practice, and other required village approval or prohibited land rental relationships.The authors use simulated maximum likelihood methods to estimate hybrid panel models of the determinants of both market-based and administrative reallocation of land. They also use them to estimate the insecurity-induced investment costs of market-based reallocation of land.They find that administrative reallocation responds to the increasing inequality but non-market reallocations come at a significant cost in forgone investment.This paper - a product of Rural Development, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the determinants and impact of property rights systems and land tenure regimes in the process of development. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].
It is difficult to choose the "best" model for forecasting real per capita GDP for a particular country or group of countries. This study suggests potential gains from combining time series and growth-regression-based approaches to forecasting.
During the turbulent years 1976-96, aggregate data for Brazil appear to show only small changes in mean income, inequality, and incidence of poverty -- suggesting little change in the distribution of income. But a small group of urban households -- excluded from formal labor markets and safety nets -- was trapped in indigence. Based on welfare measured in terms of income alone, the poorest part of urban Brazil has experienced two lost decades.
This volume provides a very high quality set of papers on the relationship between globalization and human development. . . any one with interest in this wide ranging subject matter would find the volume an interesting and engaging read. Global Business Review Honoring Keith Griffin s more than 40 years of fundamental contributions to the discipline of economics, the papers in this volume reflect his deep commitment to advancing the well-being of the world s poor majority and his unflinching willingness to question conventional wisdom as to how this should be done. Four overarching themes recur in Keith Griffin s work and this book: the need to both eradicate poverty and redress inequalities in the distribution of wealth within and among nations; the impact of growth on inequality, and conversely inequality s impact on growth; the political economy of policy-making; and the need for openness to heterogeneity in both analytic tools and in policy recommendations. The volume begins with an introduction by the editors followed by a paper by Keith Griffin. In succeeding chapters the contributors explore strategies for reducing poverty and inequality, and provide perspectives on issues such as human development, the rural/urban divide in China, and biodiversity and sustainability. Students, researchers, policymakers and NGO analysts exploring issues in development economics, development studies, alternative economic systems, globalization, environmental sustainability, inequality and well-being will find this book of great interest.
The static economic benefits of Vietnam's accession to the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) are likely to be relatively small. The gains from increased access to ASEAN markets would be small, and they would be offset by the costs of trade diversion on the import side. But binding commitments on protection rates under the AFTA plan could provide an important stepping stone to more beneficial broader liberalization.
"Unemployment in Sri Lanka is largely voluntary. The underlying problem is not a shortage of jobs but the artificial gap between good jobs and bad ones. Policy efforts should be aimed at reducing the gap between good and bad jobs by making product markets more competitive, reducing excessive job security, and reforming government policies on pay and employment"--Cover.
