英文摘要 |
The author uses post-World War II pawn transactions in Taiwan, plus results from an historical investigation of their policy environments, to illustrate informal transaction mechanisms and transformations derived from interactions between them and Taiwan’s legal system. For many decades officials adhered to a policy aimed at preventing the sale of stolen goods in tightly controlled pawn transactions, but today they have characteristics of a formal economy as well as an informal finance system. I present evidence indicating the existence of three transaction types: those based on objects (licitness), those based on laws (Legitimatizing illicitness), and those based on violence (illicitness). The first can be analyzed as a system of lending within a formal economic domain, with transactions conducted according to the exchange values of objects, and strictly monitored by the government. The second and third are within the informal transactions domain. Transactions based on laws occupy a legal grey area in which companies link informal transactions to legal systems, thus positioning the transactions somewhere between past private sector customs and Taiwan’s current legal code in order to legitimatize informal transactions. The logic behind transactions based on violence is a penalized system that is gradually systematized, thereby marginalizing laws in the process. In this paper I discuss pawn transaction types in terms of financial dualism, informal economy as well as informal finance, in an effort to determine the current roles being played by the State and their limitations. |