scholarly journals EMBEDDED AND AUTONOMOUS MARKETS IN NORTH KOREA'S FISHING INDUSTRY: RESOURCE SCARCITY, MONITORING COSTS, AND EVOLVING INSTITUTIONS

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Peter Ward ◽  
Andrei Lankov ◽  
Jiyoung Kim

Abstract North Korea today is a most unusual post-socialist state. Market actors and market prices are integral to economic life, but private property remains illegal, and private enterprise outside the household is de jure non-existent. In such an institutional context, some market processes are more autonomous in relation to the state, while others are more embedded within state structures. In this article, we offer a theoretical account of the shape that North Korea's market economy has taken, developed from a set of fishing industry case studies. We note four broad categories of enterprises: closely embedded, loosely embedded, semi-autonomous, and autonomous. By relative autonomy/embeddedness we mean control over fixed assets, cash flow, and operational decisions such as wage and price setting. We postulate three major determinants of embeddedness/autonomy: (1) relative strategic resource scarcity between state and market actors, (2) monitoring costs, and (3) institutional evolution that reflects these realities, though to varying extents.

2021 ◽  
Vol 296 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-20
Author(s):  
AnnА KOZACHENKO ◽  

The article highlights the views of scientists on the allocation of periods (stages) in the history of internal control, which differ in the following features: the emergence and development of socio – economic relations that existed at different times; diversification of objects and subjects of control; complicating the tasks of control over the different levels of development of productive forces and equipment of each society; specific methodological techniques. Thus, the first manifestations of control are observed during the period of primitive communal system. The period of slavery is considered the stage of the emergence of internal control. Characteristic of this period was physical coercion to work. In the period of the feudal system, the peculiarities of the development of socio-economic formation of European states are the distinction between external and internal audit, and accounting registers to reflect the facts of economic life, which served for entries in the accounts of the General Ledger. In addition, control activities were manifested in the movement of credit and settlement transactions between buyers, in settlements between buyers and banks, in production processes and private ownership of the means of production. The capitalist system of production did not require many special control bodies, and its functions were carried out directly by the owners of the means of production. The basis of capitalism was the private property of the bourgeoisie on the means of production, but not on the worker, who at that time received more freedom. It was during the communist formation that thorough work was carried out on the methodological support of internal economic control, but its active development began after the declaration of independence of Ukraine, by borrowing the foundations in foreign countries. Thus, the periodization presented in the article helps to trace the historical aspect of the development and formation of internal control as a control system as a whole, in a certain period of time in which.


Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith

This chapter discusses the basic economic life in the Middle Ages, noting the absence of trade or a market during the period. It first considers the legacy of the Romans with respect to economic and political life, including their commitment to the sanctity of private property and Christianity. In particular, it describes Christian attitudes toward wealth and the link between morality and the market. It also examines the ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Nicole Oresme before turning to the role of markets in the Middle Ages, along with their special characteristics. Finally, it looks at other aspects of economic life during the medieval period, such as the intrusion of ethics on economics—the fairness or justice of the relationship between master and slave, lord and serf, landlord and sharecropper.


Author(s):  
Egbert Koops

Prices in the Roman economy were generally set by the operation of free market forces. Occasional government interventions in the form of price ceilings occurred in times of crisis, to stabilise volatile or politically important markets, or to signal moral policies. The mechanism of price formation was generally understood, but price shocks were expected to be curbed. In a similar vein, the valuation techniques developed by the Roman jurists were based on “true” prices rather than pure market prices. Even so, party autonomy in price setting was the norm. The grain market was guided to some extent for obvious political reasons, but even here there was room for private initiative. The freedom to contract was stressed as late as Diocletian, but, not much later, rampant inflation forced him to issue his edict on maximum prices, which remains an exceptional regulation in many ways.


Author(s):  
Adam M. Sowards

For more than a century after the republic’s founding in the 1780s, American law reflected the ideal that the commons—the public domain—should be turned into private property. As Americans became concerned about resource scarcity, waste, and monopolies at the end of the 19th century, reform-minded bureaucrats and scientists convinced Congress to maintain in perpetuity some of the nation’s land as public. This shift offered a measure of protection and an alternative to private property regimes. The federal agencies that primarily manage these lands today—U.S. Forest Service (USFS), National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—have worked since their origins in the early decades of the 20th century to fulfill their diverse, competing, evolving missions. Meanwhile, the public and Congress have continually demanded new and different goals as the land itself has functioned and responded in interdependent ways. In the mid-20th century, the agencies intensified their management, hoping they could satisfy the rising—and often conflicting—demands American citizens placed on the public lands. This intensification often worsened public lands’ ecology and increased political conflict, resulting in a series of new laws in the 1960s and 1970s. Those laws strengthened the role of science and the public in influencing agency practices while providing more opportunities for litigation. Predictably, since the late 1970s, these developments have polarized public lands’ politics. The economies, but also the identities, of many Americans remain entwined with the public lands, making political standoffs—over endangered species, oil production, privatizing land, and more—common and increasingly intractable. Because the public lands are national in scope but used by local people for all manner of economic and recreational activities, they have been and remain microcosms of the federal democratic system and all its conflicted nature.


2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amandine Ody-Brasier ◽  
Isabel Fernandez-Mateo

Economic sociologists have studied how social relationships shape market prices by focusing mostly on vertical interactions between buyers and sellers. In this article, we examine instead the price consequences of horizontal relationships that arise from intergroup processes among sellers. Our setting is the market for Champagne grapes. Using proprietary transaction-level data, we find that female grape growers—a minority in the growers’ community—charge systematically higher prices than do male grape growers. We argue that the underlying mechanism for this unexpected pattern of results involves the relationships developed and maintained by minority members. Specifically, in-depth fieldwork reveals that female growers get together to compensate for their isolation from the majority. This behavior enables them to overcome local constraints on the availability of price-relevant information, constraints that stem from prevailing norms of market behavior: individualism and secrecy. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of how relationships shape price-setting processes, for the sociological literature on intergroup relations, and for our understanding of inequality in markets.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-169
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Tarkowski

The article illustrates that property rights, including in particular property and the relationship between property rights and the category of freedom in the nineteenth-century Russian Empire, was one of the most important areas of scientific activity of Richard Pipes. For centuries, both the institution of freedom and property were highly politicised. Based on Richard Pipes’ findings, it can be concluded that the relationship between ownership and freedom manifested itself in the feature of relativity or ambivalence, depending on the time and individual parts of the Russian Empire. In the 19th century, the former mainly influenced the development of the monetary economy, while the latter strengthened the idea of samoderzhavyie in the political system. Richard Pipes noticed the sources of the antinomy between the idea of freedom and property in nineteenth-century Russia in the dynamically developing economic life and the “stillness” of the autocratic political power system. Following this concept, the article presents the doubts appearing among the St Petersburg ruling elite as well as provincial officials related to establishing the personal freedom of peasants in Russia, which finally took place in 1861. The system of tsarist autocracy in Russia, which was developing throughout history, noticed significant links between property and freedom. A good example of this process was the confiscation of land property. In this regard, the article mentions political premises, the impact of the phenomenon of “paradox and tragedy,ˮ as well as the socio-economic calculations carried out in the field of confiscating private property in the western governorates of the Russian Empire, after the January Uprising of 1863.


2021 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 06018
Author(s):  
Victor Barkhatov

A plurality of subjects of ownership characterizes the Russian economy. The transformation processes that began in 1991 continue to the present day. Until now, the question of the comparative effectiveness of various ownership forms remains open. Based on the analysis of trends in public and private property in Russia in 1992-2018, the article examines the correspondence of these processes to important systemic properties: cyclicity, cumulativeness, nonlinearity, and evolutionary character. Special attention is paid to such indicators of transformation processes as investments in fixed assets under various ownership forms. The conclusion is made about the low efficiency of the existing ownership structure in ensuring the Russian economy’s sustainable development. A hypothesis is put forward about the need to further develop forms and relations of ownership based on the development of alternative forms of ownership, including shared ownership.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Esther Yeboah Danso-Wiredu

The history of Penkye is linked to that of Winneba township since it is the first place the Effutu people settled in the town. Located along the coast, majority of its residents are employed in the fishing industry. Intriguing about Penkye is how social and economic livelihoods of residents are entangled in gender roles and reciprocity. The article delves into the institutional embeddedness of fishing and community life. It examines how gender ideologies differentially inform men and women’s roles in the fishing economy. Drawing on interviews conducted with community members, the study constructs economic life stories for men and women within the fishing community. It analyzes how they formulate livelihood strategies differently from other parts of the country as a result. The study concludes that such realities defy the ideologies of the impersonal market economy propagated by the capitalist ideology, thereby questioning the basis of neoliberal ideology that market prices are solely determined by demand and supply interactions.


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