Designing property rights for water: mediating market,government, and corporation failures

Recent decades have seen an acceleration in public concern about the allocation of increasingly scarce water supplies. There are many reasons for this concern, such as growth in urban populations. In this article, we focus on how surface water’s special qualities (the combination of spillovers, rent-seeking behavior, and common pool resources) complicate the assignment of property rights in any legal framework. These characteristics make specific market structures necessary in order to efficiently allocate rights. The state usually designs those structures. Yet, just like markets can fail, so can governments fail to effectively allocate those rights. So designers often turn to quasi-judicial conservancy boards as a second-best solution. We argue that those boards may themselves fail through a form of “corporation failure.” We address these three types of failures, and offer an analysis of two cases that suggests that the likelihood conservancy boards will suffer from corporate failure depends on the actions of the boards and outside stakeholders (like governments).

Where Size Matters: Agglomeration Economies of Illegal Drug Markets in Philadelphia

There is a debate over whether police attention focused on an illegal drug market causes dealers to spatially displace their activities “around the corner” therefore having no positive impact on the aggregate level of illegal drug sales in the city. The alternative perspective is that focused police attention lowers the rate of illegal drug sales in the city. Recent research in Jersey City, New Jersey has demonstrated that focused police attention does not simply move illegal drug dealing around the corner. The present analysis explains why this finding is likely to be common in other cities using the economic theory of “agglomeration economies.” Agglomeration economies illustrate that taking the largest and most profitable site from illegal drug dealers will make dealing in the surrounding neighborhoods less rather than more profitable and lead to a smaller marketplace overall. The empirical analysis focuses on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.     

Historical Perspectives on Gender, Security, and Technology: Gathering, Weaving, and Subsistence in Colonial Mission Communities of Bolivia

The present paper brings to the discussion of human risks and rights an analysis of the gendered spheres of labor that developed in the eighteenth-century mission communities of lowland, eastern Bolivia. It argues that the differential work experiences of men and women, their access to technology and to the rewards of their labor, can be explained only by combining sensitivity to gender issues with a contextual framework that takes into account the environment, cultural expectations, and political economy. This historical case study is situated in Chiquitos, one of the Iberian colonial frontiers established in the ecological borderlands between the Andes and Amazonia.     

德国水务私有化及其监管

德国水务事业改革是城市公用事业改革的重要组成部分,理论基础为给付行政模式由直接走向间接以及自由化和私有化理论,实践模式主要有企业管理或运营者模式和特许经营模式。从改革的经验看,政府监管体制的保障是私有化改革非常重要的方面。我国推行公共行政民营化,在借鉴德国经验时,既要注意事务分配、公权力调整、监管目标确定等一般性问题,还应当注意基准评估制度以及供水业管网和经营相分离的具体制度。     

论中国《反垄断法》实施中的相关市场界定

Defining relevant markets is the foundation of establishing main antimonopoly regimes and the key issue in enforcing antimonopoly law, which often reflects the leniency or strictness of enforcement. In the process of defining relevant product market, the main factors to be considered include physical function and use purpose of product, product price, consumers’ preference and substitutable possibility of product supply. In defining relevant geographic market, the main consideration involves transportation cost and product characteristics, product price, consumers’ preference and barriers to market access. On the occasion of forthcoming enforcement of the Antimonopoly Law of China, the enforcement authorities should draw up a specific rule of the definition of relevant markets. Wang Xianlin got his Ph.D from Law School of Renmin University of China (2001) and is a Fulbright visiting scholar at Law School of George Washington University (2007–2008). Prof. Wang is a director of Economic Law Institute and a doctoral tutor in Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Law. He was once a member of the advisory committee of antimonopoly legislation of the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council of P.R.C. and is a standing director of the Economic Law Academy affiliated with China Law Society. His research focuses on competition law and intellectual property law. He has ten books published individually or cooperatively, including the monograph, such as the Intellectual Property and Antimonopoly Law—Studies on antimonopoly issues of abuse of intellectual property rights and WTO competition policy and Chinese antimonopoly legislation and abuse of intellectual property rights and its regulation. Moreover, he has released over 100 papers in academic journals. In recent years, his research is focused on China’s antimonopoly legislation and the abuse of IPRs of multinational companies in China.     

The Commonwealth of Nations and the EU after the ‘Global’ Crisis: Rethinking Post-2015 ‘Global’ Development?

Abstract

The continuing ‘global’ crisis has accelerated divergences between regions, especially between the ‘rising’ global South, the European Union (EU) of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and Cyprus, which belongs to both the Commonwealth and the EU. This article studies the emerging ‘vertical’ divergences between the EU and the global South, especially around the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements, and the parallel ‘horizontal’ divergences among Anglophone, Francophone (the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) and Lusophone (the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) Commonwealths, with their inheritance of emulation and competition. It focuses on the possibilities of enhanced human/citizen security to propose an analysis that challenges established perspectives and points towards prospects for Commonwealth ‘schools’ of international relations/development.     

论经济法视域的水权市场法治化

水资源管理者与民众的法治信仰缺失、原有社会体制惯性作用、社会价值本位选择的偏离等,构成了水权市场法治化建设的根本性障碍。从经济法的视域对该障碍进行检视后发现,从强化法治理念、跟进水权制度和革新水权经营机制等层面着手,可以有效地推进水权市场法治化。     

Export Growth and Development to Poor Rural Regions: a Meso-Scale Analysis of the Upper Limari

Abstract — The aim of this article is to explore the recent social and economic evolution of a rural region that was formerly one of the poorest in Chile but has been transformed by a productive specialisation in table grapes for export markets. The region is that of the Upper Limari in Chile's semi-arid Norte Chico. The analysis focuses on changes in four interrelated variables: productive investments; land markets; labour markets; and population distribution. Rapid growth in investment, the emergence of dynamic land markets, dramatic increases in labour productivity have transformed the agricultural sector. Small-scale farming has survived poorly due to lack of capital, technical problems and lack of bargaining power with the international fruit companies. The large-scale farmers have enjoyed better conditions and a reconcentration of land has occurred. However, the emergence of new productive activities in an area where labour alternatives have been historically scarce has provided new sources of income. Population is increasing in rural settlements linked to irrigated agroexportation and quality of life indicators have improved. Rural depopulation is not a feature of the region as a whole.     

平台经营者超高定价的反垄断法规制

淘宝商城事件折射了平台经营者定价的现实困境:双边市场的交叉网络外部性和互补性等经济特点决定了平台经营以不对称定价为基本特征,但从法律角度看,实施免费策略的一边市场可能涉嫌掠夺性定价,而回收总经营成本的另一边市场又可能涉嫌超高定价。如何在分享平台经营降低交易成本、提高消费者福利等正面经济效应的同时,恰当界定这种新型经营者的权利、义务边界,避免其市场力量的不当利用,是平台经营者定价反垄断法规制中需要考虑的核心问题。     

Housing needs and effective policies in high‐tech metropolitan economies

Abstract

What are the most effective ways to provide low‐income housing to those left behind in new economy housing markets? Do winners and losers in high‐tech competition require federal housing strategies geared to metropolitan differences? This article examines 45 large metropolitan areas grouped along a high‐tech spectrum to see who is dis‐advantaged and to deduce effective local low‐income housing strategies from market characteristics.

Finding affordable housing was, on average, more difficult for low‐income renters and owners in high‐tech economies in the 1990s. Nonetheless, high‐tech metropolitan economies, like other local/regional markets, vary greatly. Sharp differences among and within metropolitan markets make it essential that federal strategies allow local policies to respond to local conditions. To most effectively provide low‐income housing to those left behind in all markets, federal policy should target sufficient resources to severe housing needs through many more vouchers and programs that permit and encourage effective local choices.