The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation

The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation PDF Author: Taisu Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131651868X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
This survey of the fiscal history of China's last imperial dynasty explains why its ability to tax was unusually weak. It argues that the answer lies in the internal ideological worldviews of the political elite, rather than in external political or economic constraints.

The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation

The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation PDF Author: Taisu Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131651868X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
This survey of the fiscal history of China's last imperial dynasty explains why its ability to tax was unusually weak. It argues that the answer lies in the internal ideological worldviews of the political elite, rather than in external political or economic constraints.

The Laws and Economics of Confucianism

The Laws and Economics of Confucianism PDF Author: Taisu Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107141117
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
Zhang argues that property institutions in preindustrial China and England were a cause of China's lagging development in preindustrial times.

The Making of the Chinese Civil Code

The Making of the Chinese Civil Code PDF Author: Hao Jiang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009336649
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This book is the first attempt in the English language to study and evaluate the new Chinese Civil Code.

Following Their Leaders

Following Their Leaders PDF Author: Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009323156
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Models of democratic decision-making tend to assume that voters have preferences and that candidates adjust their platforms to conform with those preferences; however, the direction of causation is largely the opposite. Political elites offer policy platforms to voters, and voters adopt those policies - they follow their leaders. Following Their Leaders argues that policies are designed by the elite and the electorate has little say. Preferences for public policy tend to be anchored in a political identity associated with a candidate, party, or ideology; voters' preferences on most issues are derived from their anchor preferences. Holcombe argues that because citizens adopt the policies offered by the elite, democratic institutions are ineffective constraints on the exercise of political power. This volume explores political institutions that help control the elite who exercise political power and discusses the implications political preferences have on democracies.

Freedoms Delayed

Freedoms Delayed PDF Author: Timur Kuran
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009320033
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
According to diverse indices of political performance, the Middle East is the world's least free region. Some believe that it is Islam that hinders liberalization. Others retort that Islam cannot be a factor because the region is no longer governed under Islamic law. This book by Timur Kuran, author of the influential Long Divergence, explores the lasting political effects of the Middle East's lengthy exposure to Islamic law. It identifies several channels through which Islamic institutions, both defunct and still active, have limited the expansion of basic freedoms under political regimes of all stripes: secular dictatorships, electoral democracies, monarchies legitimated through Islam, and theocracies. Kuran suggests that Islam's rich history carries within it the seeds of liberalization on many fronts; and that the Middle East has already established certain prerequisites for a liberal order. But there is no quick fix for the region's prevailing record of human freedoms.

Contracting in Japan

Contracting in Japan PDF Author: J. Mark Ramseyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009215736
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Economic arrangements, Ramseyer writes, are structured and implemented with the intent and hope that they will be carried out with 'care, intelligence, discretion, and effort.' Yet entrepreneurs work with partial information about the products, and people, they are dealing with. Contracting in Japan illustrates this by examining five sets of negotiations and unusual contractual arrangements among non-specialist businessmen, and women, in Japan. In it, Ramseyer explores how sake brewers were able to obtain and market the necessary, but difficult-to-grow, sake rice that captured the local terroir; how Buddhist temples tried to compensate for rapidly falling donations by negotiating unusual funerary contracts; and how pre-war local elites used leasing instead of loans to fund local agriculture. Ramseyer examines these entrepreneurs, discovering how they structured contracts, made credible commitments, obtained valuable information, and protected themselves from adverse consequences to create, maintain, strengthen, and leverage the social networks in which they operated.

Before and Beyond Divergence

Before and Beyond Divergence PDF Author: Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674266846
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
China has reemerged as a powerhouse in the global economy, reviving a classic question in economic history: why did sustained economic growth arise in Europe rather than in China? Many favor cultural and environmental explanations of the nineteenth-century economic divergence between Europe and the rest of the world. This book, the product of over twenty years of research, takes a sharply different tack. It argues that political differences which crystallized well before 1800 were responsible both for China’s early and more recent prosperity and for Europe’s difficulties after the fall of the Roman Empire and during early industrialization. Rosenthal and Wong show that relative prices matter to how economies evolve; institutions can have a large effect on relative prices; and the spatial scale of polities can affect the choices of institutions in the long run. Their historical perspective on institutional change has surprising implications for understanding modern transformations in China and Europe and for future expectations. It also yields insights in comparative economic history, essential to any larger social science account of modern world history.

The Rise of Fiscal States

The Rise of Fiscal States PDF Author: Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107013518
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
Leading economic historians present a groundbreaking series of country case studies exploring the formation of fiscal states in Eurasia.

Rulers, Religion, and Riches

Rulers, Religion, and Riches PDF Author: Jared Rubin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703681X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

Interpreting China's Grand Strategy

Interpreting China's Grand Strategy PDF Author: Michael D. Swaine
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833048309
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
China's continuing rapid economic growth and expanding involvement in global affairs pose major implications for the power structure of the international system. To more accurately and fully assess the significance of China's emergence for the United States and the global community, it is necessary to gain a more complete understanding of Chinese security thought and behavior. This study addresses such questions as: What are China's most fundamental national security objectives? How has the Chinese state employed force and diplomacy in the pursuit of these objectives over the centuries? What security strategy does China pursue today and how will it evolve in the future? The study asserts that Chinese history, the behavior of earlier rising powers, and the basic structure and logic of international power relations all suggest that, although a strong China will likely become more assertive globally, this possibility is unlikely to emerge before 2015-2020 at the earliest. To handle this situation, the study argues that the United States should adopt a policy of realistic engagement with China that combines efforts to pursue cooperation whenever possible; to prevent, if necessary, the acquisition by China of capabilities that would threaten America's core national security interests; and to remain prepared to cope with the consequences of a more assertive China.