IS CLASH OF INSTITUTIONS A CAUSE OF RURAL POVERTY?

制度冲突是农村贫困的原因吗？

• 批准号: ES/J017620/1
• 负责人: Erwin Bulte
• 金额: $ 59.91万
• 依托单位: Wageningen University & Research
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FJ017620%2F1
• 关键词: CLASH; INSTITUTIONS; CAUSE; RURAL; POVERTY

Category: Resource ConstraintsAccess to resources is regulated through institutions. For example, in parts of Africa if a widow wishes to invest in a farm she may not be able to do so because the land is owned by her late husband's family. The institution of land ownership determines her poverty. Institutions are sometimes defined as the "rules of the game". Escape from poverty depends on the rules determining access to vital resources. Sometimes the market is the institution that prevails. Land or seeds can be bought. In such a case the rules governing market transactions are generally clearly specified and upheld by courts. For this reason the market is often termed a "formal" institution. But in other cases the "rules of the game" are tacit and locally variable. Communities may have varying notions of how individuals or families should acquire land, whether a young men has to supply labour "free" to those who give him a wife, or whether seeds are communal heritage not to be bought or sold. These customary rules are not always documented and protected by national law. Such institutions are termed "informal". Real societies are a historically determined mix of varied and sometimes competing "formal" and "informal" institutions. It is sometimes proposed that "clash of institutions" (e.g. tensions between a land market and family rules of land inheritance) is a factor determining poverty in developing countries. Serfdom and family land tenure have been proposed as sources of conflict and poverty in some war-affected African countries. The advance of the market is widely seen as a solution to poverty in such circumstances, but it is not always clear how this advance is to be engineered where community informal rules defend the common interest of the poor (as in the case of African "family" land tenure, for example). Adding further to the analytic challenge are the different traditions of institutional analysis. Economists, for example, may treat only "formal" institutions, while anthropologists fly to the other extreme, and study only those "informal" institutions deeply embedded in local cultures. A bias to either extreme is not a sound basis for objective assessment. The present research is a cooperation between anthropologists and economists intended to ensure a rounded approach to the full range of institutions at play in determining poverty and poverty-alleviation. The work will be done in a conflict-recovery region because war often leads to the collapse of institutional arrangements, and post-war recovery reveals how prior institutional arrangements are rebuilt or new ones devised, and whether old (or new) clashes re-ignite. The idea of an institution as "rules of the game" is the key to our research strategy, since we deploy an experimental methodology based on games devised by both disciplines to test key hypotheses concerning institutional behaviour. We run these games with village populations to assess (through statistical means) whether and to what extent institutional values clash - e.g. whether patronage relations inhibit profit maximizing behaviour. We then work with participants to develop a reflexive understanding of the institutional values in play, where conflict exists, and where it could be eased, especially to the benefit of the poorest and most marginalized groups. We think the results will be important to a wide range of stakeholders, starting with village participants, but also to civil society groups, development agencies and government policy makers implementing post-war recovery and reform programmes, and to entrepreneurs seeking to provide new services such as seed supply and rural banking. The work will be done in Sierra Leone and cross-border communities in Liberia and Guinea - a heavily war-affected region. There will be case studies on land, labour, seeds and rural credit.

类别：资源约束通过机构对资源的访问进行管理。例如，在非洲部分地区，如果寡妇想要投资一个农场，她可能无法这样做，因为土地归她已故丈夫的家庭所有。土地所有权制度决定了她的贫穷。制度有时被定义为“游戏规则”。摆脱贫困取决于决定获得重要资源的规则。有时，市场是占上风的机构。土地或种子可以买到。在这种情况下，管理市场交易的规则通常是明确规定的，并得到法院的支持。出于这个原因，这个市场通常被称为“正式的”机构。但在其他情况下，“游戏规则”是心照不宣的，而且是局部可变的。对于个人或家庭应该如何获得土地，年轻人是否必须向给他娶妻的人“免费”提供劳动力，或者种子是否是不能买卖的公共遗产，社区可能会有不同的想法。这些习惯规则并不总是记录在案并受到国家法律的保护。这类机构被称为“非正式”。现实社会是历史决定的，是各种不同的、有时是相互竞争的“正式”和“非正式”制度的混合体。有时有人提出，“体制冲突”(例如，土地市场和土地继承的家庭规则之间的紧张关系)是决定发展中国家贫穷的一个因素。在一些受战争影响的非洲国家，农奴制和家庭土地保有权被认为是冲突和贫穷的根源。在这种情况下，市场的发展被广泛视为解决贫穷的办法，但在社区非正式规则保护穷人的共同利益的情况下(例如，在非洲“家庭”土地保有权的情况下)，如何推动这种发展并不总是很清楚。机构分析的不同传统进一步增加了分析方面的挑战。例如，经济学家可能只研究“正式”制度，而人类学家则走向另一个极端，只研究那些深深植根于当地文化的“非正式”制度。偏向任何一个极端都不是客观评估的可靠基础。本研究是人类学家和经济学家之间的一项合作，目的是确保对确定贫穷和减贫方面发挥作用的各种机构采取全面办法。这项工作将在冲突恢复地区进行，因为战争往往导致体制安排的崩溃，而战后恢复揭示了以前的体制安排是如何重建的，还是制定了新的体制安排，以及旧的(或新的)冲突是否重新点燃。将机构视为“游戏规则”是我们研究战略的关键，因为我们采用了一种基于两个学科设计的游戏的实验方法，以检验有关机构行为的关键假设。我们与乡村居民一起进行这些游戏，以(通过统计手段)评估制度价值观是否冲突以及冲突程度--例如，赞助关系是否抑制了利润最大化行为。然后，我们与参与者合作，对游戏中的体制价值观、在哪里存在冲突以及在哪里可以缓解冲突，特别是为了最贫穷和最边缘化群体的利益，建立一种反身性的理解。我们认为，这一结果将对广泛的利益攸关方具有重要意义，首先是村庄参与者，但也包括执行战后恢复和改革方案的民间社会团体、发展机构和政府政策制定者，以及寻求提供种子供应和农村银行等新服务的企业家。这项工作将在塞拉利昂以及利比里亚和几内亚的跨境社区进行，利比里亚和几内亚是一个受战争影响严重的地区。将有关于土地、劳动力、种子和农村信贷的案例研究。

项目成果

BUILDING RESILIENT HEALTH SYSTEMS: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM SIERRA LEONE AND THE 2014 EBOLA OUTBREAK

• DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjaa039
• 发表时间: 2021-05-01
• 期刊: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• 影响因子: 13.7
• 作者: Christensen, Darin;Dube, Oeindrila;Voors, Maarten
• 通讯作者: Voors, Maarten

Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0103500
• 发表时间: 2014
• 期刊: PloS one
• 影响因子: 3.7
• 作者: Chami GF;Ahnert SE;Voors MJ;Kontoleon AA
• 通讯作者: Kontoleon AA

Does microcredit increase aspirational hope? Evidence from a group lending scheme in Sierra Leone

小额信贷会增加人们的渴望吗？

• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: World Development
• 影响因子: 6.9
• 作者: A. Garcia

INSTITUTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT: A NEW APPROACH TO WEST AFRICA

机构与发展：西非的新方法

• 发表时间: 2017
• 作者: Bulte. E

From personalized exchange towards anonymous trade: A field experiment on the workings of the invisible hand

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.10.014
• 发表时间: 2017-01-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION
• 影响因子: 2.2
• 作者: Bulte, Erwin;Kontoleon, Andreas;Voors, Maarten
• 通讯作者: Voors, Maarten