Institutional Change and Uncertainty in the formation of a Property Market

Economic change since 1978 toward a market-oriented economy has brought Chinaís urban development into a new era along with profound organisational transformation and institutional change. The gradualist nature of the economic change has cast intriguing impact on the course of institutional change. New organisations, emerging from the gradual economic change, take a leading role in shaping new institutions for the new ìgameî. Institutional uncertainty is consequently derived from an explicit absence of the state as a third-party rule-enforcement, and the ambiguity between the outgoing planning system and incoming marketisation. An emerging urban property market is characterised by a new institution of ambiguous property rights and related institutional uncertainty.