Trade ‘outside the law’: Uzbek and Afghan transnational merchants between Yiwu and South-Central Asia

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the trajectories of two transnational networks present in the Chinese city of Yiwu: Afghan merchants who trade goods in and out Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan; and Uzbek traders (citizens of either Tajikistan or Uzbekistan) who commercialize their merchandise in and out Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. Our aim is to capture an ethnographically grounded understanding of informal markets and economies by analysing the notion of trade ‘outside the law’, including the contested yet widely used category of the ‘smuggler’. By paying attention to the fluidity of trading practices ‘outside the law’, we also address the uses and limitations of metaphors widely used in scholarly analysis of informal markets: notably those of ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ forms of globalization, and the transposition of formal-legal and informal-illegal exchanges onto the notions of economic ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’.     

彩票市场政府监管体制的国际比较

世界各国的彩票市场都处于政府的严格监管之下,英国、美国和法国的彩票监管体制是最有代表性的三种监管模式.通过对三种代表性监管模式的比较分析,本文认为,一个国家的彩票市场结构必须符合彩票市场技术经济特征,但彩票监管机构的设置与监管权力的配置主要是政府选择的结果,与该国的行政管理体制密切相关;而彩票公益金的使用方向则直接取决于彩票发行的目的.     

In Offense of Usury Laws: Microfoundations of Illegal Credit Contracts

Several European countries base their anti-usury laws on the definition of interest ceilings. Underlying this approach is the identification of high interest rates with the usurious nature of the relative credit contract; hence usury is nothing more than a particularly onerous credit contract. The present paper contradicts this traditional view by presenting a general micro-founded model of credit contracts that arrives at a few conclusions, before in a static and then in a dynamic contest. Firstly, it demonstrates the specificity of the usury contract with respect to the bank contract, pointing up the particular nature of those who supply and demand usurious credit. Secondly, it demonstrates that in environmental situations with little protection of property rights and a propensity to illegality, the decision of a borrower to turn to a usurer may be efficient from the Pareto standpoint and thus not the result of a rationing equilibrium in the bank credit market, as is commonly thought. Thirdly, it deduces from this the insubstantial link between interest rate level and the usurious nature of the contract. Hence two consequences for policy: (a) it is more effective to combat usury by improving the laws and law enforcement to better protect property rights, rather than introduce rate ceilings; and (b) in any case, the usury market can be reduced but not eliminated, since it is a meeting place for particular borrowers and lenders of funds.     

中国古典园林理水意境探微

园林无水则不活。有水,才会真正体会到园林之美;园林就更有生机;园林就会更显意境。园林中的水寄托着我国古圣先贤的思想,也启发陶冶着我们后来者的心智,水是中国古典园林的灵魂。     

跨界水污染的地方政府合作治理研究——基于区域公共管理视角的考量

跨界水污染的治理并不是单个地方尤其是单个地方政府所能完成的。传统的基于行政区划的“行政区行政”治理方式已经陷入了困境,进而催生了区域公共管理这种崭新的治理制度安排。这种治理方式的变革不是一蹴而就的,需要观念的创新、制度环境的创新及组织安排的创新。各地方政府必须要以公共问题和公共事务为价值导向,积极发挥第三部门的作用,进而建立起地方政府间的合作、协调、伙伴关系、双赢或共赢的治理机制。     

Crime is the Problem: Homicide,Acquisitive Crime,and Economic Conditions

A question that emerges from recent research on the relationship between economic conditions and street crimes committed for monetary gain concerns the effect of changing economic conditions on violent crime. I propose that the economy stimulates violent crime indirectly through its effect on acquisitive crime. This hypothesis is evaluated in fixed-effects panel models of change in acquisitive crime and homicide rates between 1970 and 2006. The analysis indicates that collective perceptions of economic conditions have a significant effect on an index of acquisitive crime and an indirect effect, through acquisitive crime, on homicide. Consistent with this result, the effect of collective economic perceptions is stronger for felony than argument-related homicides. A promising focus for future research is the role of underground markets in the production of both property and violent crime.

Spatializing the future: financial expectations,EU convergence and the Eastern European Forex mortgage crisis

Existing accounts of failure to predict the financial crisis focus on the complexity of the financial system, and are less useful for understanding crises in non-securitized markets. We examine the roots of optimism leading up to the Eastern European mortgage crisis through the case of Hungary, and use recent theories of expectations, which understand them as both pragmatic and fictional practices that commonly incorporate narratives. Based on archival research and interviews with bankers, regulators and legislators, we demonstrate how the EU convergence narrative was central in forming optimistic expectations. Fusing the underspecified convergence process with an orientalist geographical imaginary, this narrative and its associated measures translated growing indebtedness as ‘catching up’ with Europe, de-emphasized exchange rate risk through a belief in European convergence and precluded crisis scenarios originating in the European Union. Our findings contribute to theories of how economic expectations are formed, stabilized and maintained by developing the concept of ‘spatializing the future’, denoting practices that handle uncertainty by charting the future as movement in concrete geographical or abstract space, along externally verifiable pathways.     

A market-based solution to a sanitation issue in a marginalised area

Neo-liberal ideology, as an abstract technique of self-governance and population management, is often viewed as tolerant of extreme inequality within a market economy. However, the range of policy proposals that flow from the ideology are not necessarily insensitive to development projects in marginalised areas. Sensitivity to market mechanisms may inject pragmatism in contexts where states are unable or unwilling to supply capability enhancing public goods. Through an analysis of the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence’s proof-of-concept development project in India, this article argues that a market-oriented framework can be useful in mitigating collective action problems.     

我国水生生物资源养护立法的现状分析

我国已经形成了一个由宪法、法律、法规以及其他规范性法律文件组成的多层次、多角度水生生物资源养护的法律体系,但尚存诸多缺陷和不足。文中对此进行了剖析,并提出了相应的立法完善建议。     

Struggles for autonomy from and within the market of southeast Mexico's small coffee producers

This contribution examines the historically shifting reproduction strategies of southeast Mexico's small coffee producers through the lens of autonomy. It argues that producers attempt to create and occupy spaces of relative autonomy from commodity and labour markets while also struggling to exert a degree of control over their commodity market integration – termed here ‘autonomy within the market’. Recent developments in Mexico's coffee sector – falling real prices for certified coffee, an emerging quality programme led by transnational export firms, and devastating crop disease – are transforming coffee growing regions, threatening producer livelihoods and driving diverse reconfigurations of autonomous struggles.