Comment: Stability in Instability

China’s TVEs and the Evolution of Property Rights

Abstract

The astonishingly rapid economic development of China's Township Village Enterprises (TVEs) has been a focus of research in economics and economic sociology for more than a decade. A review of the literature however, does not leave one with the impression that the issue has been exhaustively explored. Even more important is the pervasive feeling that important lessons can be taken from TVE-development in China, which have not yet been fully grasped, nor have possible repercussions of standard property rights theory been systematically developed.