| REVISTA DE ECONOMÍA
INSTITUCIONAL No. 9, SECOND SEMESTER 2003
Legal Positionsand Institutional
Complementarities
Ugo Pagano [pdf] [html]
[Key words: legal positions, institutional complementarities,
contracts, property law, industrial organization, capitalist
systems; JEL: J41, J50, K11, K12, K22, K31, L20, P10]
Legal positions (such as rights, duties, liberties, powers,
liabilities and immunities) are linked together by strong
institutional complementarities that differ from the usual
institutional complementarities that have been recently
considered in economic literature. Legal positions not only
satisfy the usual conditions of institutional complementarity
stemming from the fact that legal positions that “fit”
together are marginally better than those that do not. They
also define legal equilibria characterized by the social
scarcity constraint that is typical of positional goods.
Probabilism: Ethics and
Economics
Alberto Castrillón [pdf] [html]
[Key words: probabilism, scholastic, ethics and economics,
Keynes; JEL: A11, A12, B10, B11,]
This essay makes reference to the Scholastic doctrine of
moral probabilism and explores the possible links between
this theological perspective and the modern concept of probability.
It shows that these concepts are more related than is suggested
by common etymological approaches. Moral probabilism helped
confessors to solve cases of conscience, without reducing
the problem of human liberty to the extremes of randomness
or determinism. Also, it suggests an analogy between the
probabilistic approach and Keynes’s Treatise on Probability:
for both Scholastic authors and Keynes economic analysis
emerges from moral analysis.
Between Modernity and Repression:
An Approach to the English Society before World War I
Mario García Molina [pdf] [html]
[Key words: modernity, repression, English society, English
imperialism, Keynes; JEL: B10, B19, Z19]
Based on literary sources and following Marshall Berman
and Benedict Anderson’s theory, this article outlines
some key tendencies of English society prior to World War
I. Economic modernization and political imperialism emerged
while the cultural avant garde (i.e. modernism) was pushed
into the background. Religious, sexual and political repression
completed the picture and supported the fear of inner ruptures
and discontinuities related to the experience of modernity;
in contrast, conventions and other mechanisms were used
to create the illusion of continuity in their place.
Historical Previous of Colombian
Foreign Debt. The Pax Britannica
Mauricio Avella [pdf] [html]
[Palabras clave: foreign debt, capital flows, foreign investment,
Pax Britannica; JEL: E22, F21, F34, N20]
Latin American access to international markets since the
beginning of the 19th century has depended on the cyclical
behaviour of foreign indebtedness. This document studies
Great Britain’s cycles of boom and recession in international
credit and Latin American participation on the international
capital movements. It emphasizes on Colombia’s role
as the main debtor in Latin America during the period known
as Pax Britannica, which is taken to begin in the third
decade of the 19th century.
Colombian Agricultural Transformation
during 1990-2002
Álvaro Balcázar [pdf] [html]
[Key words: Colombian agriculture, structure of production,
agrarian policy, rentability, redistribution; JEL: D29,
Q11, Q15, Q16, Q18]
The Colombian agrarian sector suffered a significant transformation
of its structure of production during the nineties. A whole
range of crops and productive activities that were supported
in previous decades by commercial protection policies and
different types of subsidies collapsed, while some permanent
and other labor intensive crops (fruits and vegetables)
and live stock breeding were able to grow. These changes
in the structure of production have important redistributive
implications not only between classes of producers but also
between producers and consumers.
Costs of Business Formalization:
Measuring Transaction Costs in Brazil
Decio Zylbersztajn and Carolina T. Graça [pdf] [html]
[Key words: entry costs, transaction costs measurement,
firm behavior; JEL: D23, L11, L20, L69]
In the presence of positive transaction costs, institutions
and the architecture of organizations take on fundamental
importance. This paper measures costs of opening firms in
the Brazilian garment industry. The measure of costs to
start up a new business in the garment industry in Brazil
shows a large variation between regions in the same city
and between different areas of the country. Nine different
procedures were found along with a time span of 64 days
and an average cost of 11,3% of the GDP per capita. Also
39% of the firms declared that they operated informally
for some time.
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