This paper relates quality and uncertainty. The existence of goods of many grades poses interesting and important problems for the theory of markets. On the one hand, the interaction of quality differences and uncertainty may explain important institutions of the labor market. On the other hand, this paper presents a struggling attempt to give structure to the statement: “Business in under-developed countries is difficult”; in particular, a structure is given for determining the economic costs of dishonesty. Additional applications of the theory include comments on the structure of money markets, on the notion of “insurability,” on the liquidity of durables, and on brand-name goods.

/pdf/the-market-for-lemons-quality-uncertainty-and-the-market-4tqqxk4zdn.pdf

The Market for “Lemons”: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism

We examine how self-employment among Asian and Hispanic immigrants is affected by family composition and human capital/class resources. Because of collective interests and strong personal ties the family facilitates the pooling of labor power and financial resources. Enterprising immigrants draw on these resources when establishing and operating small businesses. Our findings also show the importance of human capital/class resources in accounting for immigrant self-employment. Although foreign-earned human capital is usually not highly valued in the host labor market immigrants successfully use this human capital to achieve business ownership. Interethnic variation in personal human capital and family composition accounts for a substantial portion of the observed interethnic variation in self-employment....The data are drawn from the 1980 five percent PUMS for greater New York City and Los Angeles.... (EXCERPT)

Immigrant Self-Employment: The Family as Social Capital and the Value of Human Capital

State socialist redistributive economies are characterized by the allocation and distribution of goods through central planning. This paper develops a theory of market transition which argues that, in reforming socialist economies, the transition from redistributive to market coordination shifts sources of power and privilege to favor direct producers relative to redistributors. The shit improves incentives for direct producers, stimulates the growth of private markets, and provides to entrepreneurs -an alternative path for socioeconomic mobility. A set of hypotheses test the market transition theory with householdand village-level data.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2117747.pdf

A Theory of Market Transition: From Redistribution to Markets in State Socialism

Weber and many other theorists have defined the state as a political organization that claims and upholds a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force in a given territory.1 Writers who draw on this Weberian approach have devoted considerable theoretical attention to political organization, legitimacy, and physical coercion in the making of modern states. Until recently, however, the meaning of territory as a key practical aspect of state control has been relatively neglected by many theorists of the sources of state power. Territorial sovereignty defines people's political identities as citizens and forms the basis on which states claim authority over people and the resources within those boundaries.2 More important for our purposes here, modern states have increasingly turned to territorial strategies to control what people can do inside national boundaries. In this article, we aim to outline the emergence of territoriality in state power in Thailand, formerly called Siam. In particular, we examine the use of what we call internal territorialization in establishing control over natural resources and the people who use them.

Territorialization and state power in Thailand

I set forth in this paper a partial description and preliminary analysis of rural marketing in China. This neglected topic has significance with ranges far beyond the disciplinary concerns of economics. It interests anthropologists in particular because marketing structures of the kind described here for China appear to be characteristic of the whole class of civilizations known as “peasant” or “traditional agrarian” societies. In complex societies of this important type, marketing structures inevitably shape local social organization and provide one of the crucial modes for integrating myriad peasant communities into the single social system which is the total society. The Chinese case would appear to be strategic for the comparative study of peasant marketing in traditional agrarian societies because the integrative task accomplished there was uniquely large; because the exceptional longevity and stability of Chinese society have allowed the marketing system in many regions to reach full maturity prior to the beginnings of modernization; and because available documentation of Chinese marketing over several centuries provides rich resources for the study of systemic development—of change within tradition.

Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part I

The City in late imperial China

I set forth in this paper a partial description and preliminary analysis of rural marketing in China. This neglected topic has significance that ranges far beyond the disciplinary concerns of economics. It interests anthropologists in particular because marketing structures of the kind described here for China appear to be characteristic of the whole class of civilizations known as “peasant” or “traditional agrarian” societies. In complex societies of this important type, marketing structures...

/pdf/marketing-and-social-structure-in-rural-china-ew070clkcr.pdf

G. William Skinner

Papers

Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China, Part I

The City in late imperial China

Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China

The City in Late Imperial China.

Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History.