EMBEDDED AND AUTONOMOUS MARKETS IN NORTH KOREA'S FISHING INDUSTRY: RESOURCE SCARCITY, MONITORING COSTS, AND EVOLVING INSTITUTIONS
- Authors
- Ward, Peter; Lankov, Andrei; Kim, Jiyoung
- Issue Date
- Mar-2021
- Publisher
- CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
- Keywords
- North Korea; marketization; embeddedness; resource scarcity; monitoring costs; institutional evolution; fishing industry; case study
- Citation
- JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES, v.21, no.1, pp.53 - 74
- Journal Title
- JOURNAL OF EAST ASIAN STUDIES
- Volume
- 21
- Number
- 1
- Start Page
- 53
- End Page
- 74
- URI
- http://scholarworks.bwise.kr/ssu/handle/2018.sw.ssu/41189
- DOI
- 10.1017/jea.2020.33
- ISSN
- 1598-2408
- Abstract
- North Korea today is a most unusual post-socialist state. Market actors and market prices are integral to economic life, but private property remains illegal, and private enterprise outside the household is de jure non-existent. In such an institutional context, some market processes are more autonomous in relation to the state, while others are more embedded within state structures. In this article, we offer a theoretical account of the shape that North Korea's market economy has taken, developed from a set of fishing industry case studies. We note four broad categories of enterprises: closely embedded, loosely embedded, semi-autonomous, and autonomous. By relative autonomy/embeddedness we mean control over fixed assets, cash flow, and operational decisions such as wage and price setting. We postulate three major determinants of embeddedness/autonomy: (1) relative strategic resource scarcity between state and market actors, (2) monitoring costs, and (3) institutional evolution that reflects these realities, though to varying extents.
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