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Stop Tinkering and State Integrating

We continue to suffer profound institutional gaps on the local, national and international levels – especially in the areas of property rights, access to credit and effective governance. I attended the CIPE Democracy that Delivers for Entrepreneurs conference in Chicago on April 9-10 and shared views with thought leaders from Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Philippines and Venezuela. While it may seem that citizens in such developing economies suffer more from institutional paralysis, the pain felt by the local start-up dealing with banks, bureaucracy and back room deals is just as real and just as prevalent on the south and west sides of Chicago.

System Shocks and Property Market Institutions: China Property Market Reform

I first traveled to China in 2001 not long after the real estate reforms of 1999 to help build professional real estate services there. China was committed to moving to more privatization of its real estate markets and there was a great desire to replicate – often uncritically – the success of U.S. property markets. It was quite a different world on my recent trip to China to attend an expert roundtable held earlier this month by the  Unirule Institute of Economics at Renmin University in Beijing on the findings of the International Property Markets Scorecard.