City Management： an Institutional Perspective

Institutional arrangement, which is one of the basic components of social development strategy on municipal economy, follows the strategic target of city development and is an important way to support it. Material resources and administrative components are the indispensable two wings to form competitiveness. The city economic expansion and urbanization of China nowadays speed up the growth of the city innovation system. The city management provides practical development platform for the city＇s fast development. However, serious challenges also appear in many fields of the city in our country. Especially the shortage of institution caused the higher cost of the city economy and social development, and even the massive losses that cannot be compensated.

Supporting farmer-managed irrigation systems in the Shigar valley, Karakorum： Role of the government and Aga Khan Rural Support Programme

Farmer-managed irrigation systems(FMIS) in the high altitude valleys of the Karakorum,Pakistan, continue to be managed effectively despite increased pressure on the social arrangements that sustain them. Colonial era records shows that over a century ago government agencies undertook irrigation support projects. In the past three decades,government agencies and the non-government agency Aga Khan Rural Support Programme(AKRSP), which channels foreign funds into the region, have actively engaged in the provision of irrigation support. This article seeks to explore whether such projects support or undermine farmer-managed irrigation systems and the complex institutional arrangements that underpin them. Field research using ethnographic and participatory methods was conducted in spring 2013 in the upper Shigar valley, Skardu district, GilgitBaltistan. The findings show that irrigation development is a political activity that involves village-based actors, religious leaders, local politicians,and government and non-government agencies.Government agencies operate in a largely top-down,engineering mode, their larger projects limited to villages suffering water scarcity. The local government provides small funds for renovation work of FMIS,though allocation of funds is highly politicized. Nongovernment agencies, for a variety of reasons including donor-funding cycles, apply a one-size-fitsall ‘participatory' model in an attempt to socially engineer rules and institutions. In communities divided by factionalism the use of such external models that stress formation of committees are unlikely to yield positive results, and could instead contribute to undermining the very systems they seek to support. This research argues that irrigation interventions should take care to build upon the rich and complex social arrangements that have sustained FMIS through the centuries.

Innovation or Rent-seeking:The Entrepreneurial Behavior during China's Economic Transformation

Although achieving impressive economic growth during the economic reform period, China has been plagued by rampant corruption and a widening income gap. How can the coexistence of these two phenomena be explained？ In this paper, we argue that before 1994, the coexistence was induced by a series of expediential institutional arrangements to stimulate entrepreneurial activities and after 1994, it was entrenched because of the slow progress in the overall reform toward becoming a market economy and because of inappropriate government actions and the lack of government action in institutional building. To solve these problems, economic and political reforms need to be accelerated to improve market institutions and to establish the rule of law.

Hukou-Restricted Migration and Migrants'Health:Evidence and Policy Implication

Since the 1980s,rapid economic development in China has continued to attract great numbers of migrants from rural to urban labor markets.As a result,the constraints of the hukou registration system on migration flows have gradually declined.Nevertheless,institutional barriers associated with the hukou remain for migrants in their social integration in destination.And these have led to substantial negative impacts on migrants'physical,social and psychological wellbeing.Regional institutional variation and recent reforms in the hukou system at the provincial or lower level set up a semi experimental context in which to examine how institutional or structural differences can affect migrants'wellbeing.This study analyzes the health-related differences between migrants in two major migrant-receiving cities,Beijing and Shenzhen.To eliminate the effect of self-selection in destination choice,we use propensity score matching to remove the observable differences which are relevant in destination choice and to make the respondents in the two cities more comparable.With the matched samples,we examine the net effect of migration destination on health outcomes and health service use.We found that migrants in Shenzhen have relatively poorer physical and psychological health compared with those in Beijing,and that they have more unmet health needs in spite of their higher use of health services.We discuss the structural and institutional factors which may be relevant to the observed net health differences,including the differences III policy implementation and regulations between these two cities.

Has Fiscal Federalism Worked for Macroeconomic Purposes?The Chinese Experience 1994-2003

China＇s central government undertook major tax regime reform in 1994 that was characterized by fiscal federalism. In hindsight, this reform might be viewed as being more emphatic towards the revenue side than the expenditure side. The reform has resulted in certain success both for revenue shifting and inflation fighting purposes. However, the reform and its subsequent follow-ups have not addressed some fundamental issues pertaining to China＇s government finance system, such as the overhauling of the function of government finance and redrawing lines between the central and regional governments with regard to their fiscal responsibilities and duties. Moreover, fiscal federalism might have actually increased fiscal burden on the economy, especially on domestic sectors of the economy. However, coupled with enhanced policy support for China＇ s external development, fiscal federalism might have helped to further accelerate resource shifts toward the external sector, thus resulting in an unprecedented rapid expansion in China＇ s exports since the mid1990s.