Law and Commerce in Traditional China : An Institutional Perspective on the "Great Divergence"

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概要

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• In the West, legal tradition was generally characterized by the use ofexternal and relatively fixed rules or precedents with independent thirdparty enforcement. In China, the legal structure was part of the governmentbureaucracy that often relied on the use of general and flexiblelegal and ethical principles to mediate civil and commercial disputes.This paper provides a review on the debate on China's traditional legalsystem in a comparative perspective. It shows that lineage and native-placebased Chinese merchant groups resorted to a reputation mechanismand informal and internal rules to enforce contracts and secureproperty rights. As the Western type of rule-based system exhibits scaleeconomies with rising efficiency at higher volumes of exchange, particularlyimpersonal exchange, I argue that divergent legal traditions shedcrucial insights to the differential patterns of long-term economicgrowth and the "great divergence" between China and the West in themodern era.

• 2006-03-03

著者

• 馬 徳斌

  政策研究大学院

関連論文

• Law and Commerce in Traditional China : An Institutional Perspective on the "Great Divergence"

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