Author: tingxulaw

The Co-evolution of Diversity in Property and Economic Development: Evolutionary Economics and the Vertical Dimension (Part 2)

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Having laid out the horizontal dimensions of diversity in property in Part 1, I here offer a critique of the assumption in mainstream economics that all kinds of property institutions need to be or will be transformed into private property to promote economic development. I also reflect on my previous work that applies and develops Darwinian mechanisms of variation, inheritance, and selection—which has been extensively discussed in evolutionary biology and evolutionary economics—to study property regime transformation in China.

While working on our co-authored paper, Professor Erik Reinert introduced me to two very important books and encouraged me to think about the relevance of the work of Darwin and Veblen to study property regime transformation in China: Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), Harvard biologist and historian of science; Thorstein Veblen: Economics for an Age of Crises edited by Erik himself and Francesca Viano. Erik also introduced me to the work of evolutionary economists including Professor Richard Nelson of Columbia University.

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The Co-evolution of Diversity in Property and Economic Development: Key Concepts and the Horizontal Dimension (Part 1)

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This blog post builds on the ‘Institutions, Economic Development, and China’s Development Policy for Escaping Poverty’ piece and comprises two parts dealing with the key concepts (Part 1) and mechanisms (Part 2) for evaluating the co-evolution of diversity in property and economic development. I argue that diversity in property plays a key role in economic development and that there are two dimensions that are important for examining the co-evolution of diversity in property and economic development—horizontal (Part 1) and vertical (Part 2).

In this post, I offer a critique of the assumption in mainstream economics that private property is the only kind of property institutions that can stimulate and preserve economic development (I am, of course, not the first to offer critiques of this assumption; for existing studies, see e.g., Kennedy 2011). I focus on the meaning of ‘diversity in property’, which concerns the horizontal level analysis.

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Institutions, Economic Development, and China’s Development Policy for Escaping Poverty

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I recently have had opportunities to reread the works of Professors Erik Reinert and Peer Vries and to reflect on my previous work on the relationship between institutions, economic development, and China’s development policy for escaping poverty. Professors Reinert and Vries have studied, along with a few other distinguished economists and economic historians, ‘poverty traps’ at national and transnational levels for decades (eg, Serra 1613; Landes 1998; Reinert 2007; Reinert 2009; Vries 2013). Both argued that innovation and structural change are the keys to escaping poverty.

Professors Reinert’s and Vries’s work on economic development has brought the work of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) to light. In this blog post, I will review how the work of Schumpeter, Reinert, and Vries helps us explore three key questions: First, what kind of development does a country need to escape poverty? Second, what kind of institutions can promote development? Third, how to develop? These three questions are crucial to understand China’s escape from poverty.

Professors Reinert’s and Vries’s arguments can be well supported by China’s national development policy. Below are a few highlights of rich empirical evidence. In 1984 the Chinese government proposed a development-oriented poverty reduction policy to replace the previous aid reliance policy (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council 1984; for critiques of relying on massive foreign aid to escape poverty, see e.g. Moyo 2009; Hubbard and Duggan 2009; Banerjee and Duflo 2011). On 18 January 1992, Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997, leader of the PRC from 1978 to 1989) made a famous speech in his Southern Tour, emphasising that ‘development is the absolute principle’ (fazhan cai shi ying daoli). Since then, China’s economic development has entered a new stage. In 1994 the Chinese government fully adopted the development-oriented poverty reduction policy as a national policy.

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