Property Relations, Incentives and Welfare

The dramatic implosions of the centrally administered, non-democratic political systems in central and eastern Europe in the late 1980s have generated a body of research concerning the transition from public ownership, and the role of the market and other institutions in engendering good incentives for economic actors. The essays collected in this volume study property relations, their associated incentives and the consequent effects on welfare: the ubiquitous theme is that efficiency cannot be divorced from the distribution of productive assets.

Autorentext

JOHN E. ROEMER is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis, where he is also Director of the Program on Economy, Justice and Society. He is the author of over 90 academic articles and eight books including Egalitarian Perspectives: Essays in Philosphical Economics and A Future for Socialism. Roemer is on the board of several academic journals, and is associate editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Economic Literature and Economic Design. He has been a Fellow of the Econometric Society since 1986.

Inhalt

The International Economic Association - Acknowledgements - List of Contributors and Participants - Abbreviations and Acronyms - Preface - Introduction; J.E.Roemer - PART 1: WELFARE AND PROPERTY RELATIONS - Informational Rents and Property Rights in Land; D.Mookherjee - Comment; P.Bardhan - An Efficiency Argument for Sustainable Use; J.Silvestre - Comment; R.B.Howarth - Full Employment as a Worker-Discipline Device; K.O.Moene & M.Wallerstein - Comment; A.Rosen - Transferability of Collective Property Rights: Does Trade Destroy Trust?; P.Seabright - Comment; S.Zamagni - Limited Privatization in the Presence of Public Bads; J.E.Roemer - Comment; V.Polterovich - PART 2: FINANCE AND CONTROL - Corporate Governance, Financial Systems and the Transition to Capitalism: Towards a Conceptual Framework; E.Berglof - Comment; M.Aoki - Long-Term Investment and Monitoring in Financial Relationships; E-L.von Thadden - Comment; M.Fleurbaey - Alternative Models of Control: Efficiency, Accessibility and Market Failures; F.Barca - Comment; J.Caballe PART 3: DISTRIBUTION AND THE TYPE OF FIRM - Employment Contracts, Finance and the Distribution of Wealth; A.F.Newman - Comment; T.Picketty - Democratic Firms and the Distribution of Wealth; S.Bowles & H.Gintis - Comment; I.Ortuno-Ortin - PART 4: TRANSITION TO THE MARKET - The Economics of Enterprise Restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe; P.Aghion, O.Blanchard & W.Carlin - Comment; W.T.Woo - Chinese Township-Village Enterprises as Vaguely Defined Cooperatives; M.L.Weitzman & C.Xu - Comment; Z.Cui - PART 5: DEMOCRACY AND DISTRIBUTION - Why Have the Rabble Not Redistributed the Wealth? On the Stability of Democracy and Unequal Property; L.Putterman - Comment; M.Wallerstein - Index