On Modes of Economic Governance
研究支撑经济活动的正式与非正式制度，比较国家法律、私人秩序、营利性治理及社会网络等不同治理模式在保护产权、执行合同等方面的表现与局限。
Economic governance consists of the processes that support economic activity and economic transactions by protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and taking collective action to provide appropriate physical and organizational infrastructure. These processes are carried out within institutions, formal and informal. The field of economic governance studies and compares the performance of different institutions under different conditions, the evolution of these institutions, and the transitions from one set of institutions to another. Formal and informal institutions arise and evolve to underpin economic activity and exchange by protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and collectively providing physical and organizational infrastructure. The field of economic governance studies and compares these institutions: state politico-legal institutions, private ordering within the law (credible contracting, arbitration), for-profit governance (credit-rating agencies, organized crime), and social networks and norms. Private institutions can outperform the state’s legal system in obtaining and interpreting relevant information, and imposing social sanctions on the violators of norms. But private institutions are often limited in