Synopses & Reviews
This volume presents historical, contemporary, and theoretical perspectives on the role of local communities and social norms in the economic development process. Using historical evidence combined with recent developments in institutional economics involving game theory and contracts, it establishes that communities can enhance the development of a market economy under certain circumstances -- and sheds light on what those circumstances are.
About the Author
Masahiko Aoki is Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Director-General of the Research Institute of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. His work on the theory of the firm, the Japanese economy, and comparative economic institutions has given rise to many widely read publications, including
The Japanese Main Bank System (co-edited with Hugh Patrick) and
The Co-operative Game Theory of the Firm.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Communities and Markets in Economic Development,
Masahiko Aoki and Yujiro HayamiPart I. Theoretical and Historical Perspectives
1. Impersonal Exchange and the Origin of Markets: From the Community Responsibility System to Individual Legal Responsibility in Pre-modern Europe, Avner Greif
2. Community and Market in England: Open Fields and Enclosures Revisited, Robert C. Allen
3. The Two Paths of Agrarian System Evolution in the Philippine Rice Bowl, Yujiro Hayami and Masao Kikuchi
4. Community Norms and Embeddedness: A Game-Theoretic Approach, Masahiko Aoki
Part II. Community in Market Development
5. Middlemen in a Peasant Community: Vegetable Marketing in Indonesia, Yujiro Hayami and Toshihiko Kawagoe
6. Market Integrators for Rural-based Industrialization: The Case of the Hand-Weaving Industry in Laos, Akihiko Ohno
7. The Role of Business Networks in Market Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, Marcel Fafchamps
8. Risk and Insurance in Transition: Perspectives from Zhouping County, China, Jonathan Morduch and Terry Sicular
Part III. Governance of Local Commons
9. Water Community: An Empirical Analysis of Cooperation on Irrigation in South India, Pranab Bardhan
10. State and Community in the Deterioration of a National Irrigation System, Masao Kikuchi, Masako Fujita, and Yujiro Hayami
11. Evolution and Consequences of Community Forest Management in the Hill Region of Nepal, Keijiro Otsuka and Towa Tachibana
12. Liberal Reforms and Community Responses in Mexico, Alain de Janvry, Céline Dutilly, Carlos Muñoz-Piña, and Elisabeth Sadoulet
13. Community Arrangements to Overcome Market Failures: Pooling Groups in Japanese Fisheries, Jean-Philippe Platteau and Erika Seki
14. Comments, Douglass North