RePEc data for World Social and Economic Review

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Michael Hudson
Author-Name: Dirk Bezemer
Title: Incorporating the Rentier Sectors into a Financial Model
Abstract: Current macroeconomics ignores the roles that rent, debt and the financial sector play in shaping our economy. We discuss the Classical view on rents and policy responses to the rentier sector in the 19th century. The finance, insurance & real estate sector is today's incarnation of the rentier sector. This paper shows how financial flows can be conceptually and statistically studied separately from (but interacting with) the real sector. We discuss finance's interaction with government and with the international economy.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 1
Volume: 2012
Issue: 1
Year: 2012
Month: September
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/incorporating-the-rentier-sectors-into-a-financial-model/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WER-Vol1-No1-Article1-Hudson-and-Bezemer.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:1

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Milford Bateman
Author-Name: Ha-Joon Chang
Title: Microfinance and the Illusion of Development: From Hubris to Nemesis in Thirty Years
Abstract:
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 13
Volume: 2012
Issue: 1
Year: 2012
Month: September
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/microfinance-and-the-illusion-of-development-from-hubris-to-nemesis-in-thirty-years/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WER-Vol1-No1-Article2-Bateman-and-Chang-v2.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:13

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Roberto Frenkel
Author-Name: Martin Rapetti
Title: External Fragility or Deindustrialization: What is the Main Threat to Latin American Countries in the 2010s?
Abstract: In this paper we evaluate whether the surge of capital inflows to Latin American countries after the 2007-08 global financial crisis poses a threat for these economies. Recent IMF's documents have warned that capital inflows could lead to boom-and-bust cycles ending up in external and financial crises as in the past. We provide evidence that the external conditions of these economies are far more robust than in periods prior to crises. The evidence that Latin American countries are not showing signs of external fragility does not imply, however, that the current flow of capital does not pose a threat for them. In our view, capital inflows could harm economic development in the region by weakening the expansion of modern tradable activities. We show that capital inflows have induced an appreciation of real exchange rates and a deterioration of tradable sector profitability. Signs of deceleration of growth in manufactures and tradable services have started to emerge.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 37
Volume: 2012
Issue: 1
Year: 2012
Month: September
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/external-fragility-or-deindustrialization-what-is-the-main-threat-to-latin-american-countries-in-the-2010s/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WER-Vol1-No1-Article3-Frenkel-and-Rapetti.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:37

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Rosnick
Author-Name: Dean Baker
Title: Pension Liabilities: Fear Tactics and Serious Policy
Abstract: There is major national debate over the funding status of state and local pension funds. Many economists have argued that pension funds are being overly optimistic in assuming that pensions will be able to get 8 percent nominal returns on their invested funds. This calculation is based on the historic average of the mix of assets that are held by these funds. They have argued that funds should instead that their assets will get the risk-free rate of return on US Treasury bonds and build up their funds accordingly. This paper applies a funding rule projects returns based on current price to earnings ratios in the stock market. It runs a number of simulations based on the pattern of stock returns since the beginning of the last century. It shows that in all cases this funding rule would imply a more even flow of payments to the pension fund than a funding rule that assume a risk-free rate of return. The implication of this analysis is that if state and local governments want to maintain a relatively even flow to their pensions and not burden taxpayers at certain points in time with excess burdens, pensions should adopt a funding rule like the one described in this paper.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 57
Volume: 2012
Issue: 1
Year: 2012
Month: September
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/pension-liabilities-fear-tactics-and-serious-policy/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WER-Vol1-No1-Article4-Rosnick-and-Baker.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:57

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: John F Tomer
Title: Brain Physiology, Egoistic and Empathic Motivation, and Brain Plasticity: Toward a More Human Economics
Abstract: The brain physiology research of leading evolutionary neuroscientist, Paul MacLean, has important implications for human economic motivation. Gerald Cory in his research has admirably utilized MacLean's findings and has persuasively explained that humans have two dominant motivations: 1) ego or self-interest and 2) empathy or other-interest, which our brains attempt to balance. This view is clearly important and at odds with mainstream economics in which self-interest is the dominant motivation. The MacLean-Cory view, also known as Dual Motive Theory (DMT), represents a serious challenge to mainstream economics. However, the DMT leaves something to be desired. While understanding the promise of the perspective deriving from brain physiology, some scholars have expressed dissatisfaction with it. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to revise DMT utilizing the concept of brain plasticity and argue that the mainstream economic image of the brain is not supported by current knowledge of brain science. Brain plasticity refers to the ability of the brain to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment. Some of this plasticity is no doubt genetically determined but some brain change is a product of individual effort and represents the individual's investment in intangible capital (standard human capital, social capital, personal capital, and so on). In this revised view, the balance that individuals, groups, and societies strike between ego and empathy orientation is to a great extent determined by these intangible investments, not simply by brain physiology.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 76
Volume: 2012
Issue: 1
Year: 2012
Month: September
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/brain-physiology-egoistic-and-empathic-motivation-and-brain-plasticity-toward-a-more-human-economics/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WER-Vol1-No1-Article5-Tomer.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:76

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ali Kadri
Title: Revisiting Arab Socialism
Abstract: The class in charge of development under Arab socialism was an alliance of the military with intermediate classes. Intermediate classes are sections of the working class differentiated by skill, higher income or occupation. In this relationship, the army held sway, and insofar as it placated populist aspirations for more egalitarian distribution, its role was progressive. The army and the intermediate class form the state bourgeois class, and exercise a collective ownership of the state. Hussein and Abdel Malek characterised the Arab socialist state as a surrogate bourgeoisie. Under Arab socialism, the predominant relationships remained capitalist and the repression over the labour process necessary for value creation persisted. However, by creating the financial space for the expansion of state-led industrial investment, investing in social infrastructure and undertaking vast land reform and redistribution measures, the Arab socialist model had outperformed the ongoing neoliberal model. Under the neoliberal model, the military re-allied itself with merchant/rentier capital and global financial capital. Generals became merchants, weakened the national front considerably, and the old state bourgeois class transmuted into a fully fledged comprador class. In this new ruling class alliance, the army no longer held sway. Global financial capital became the dominant player to which generals prostrated. Prior to the ongoing revolutionary phase, the Arab neoliberal state compressed wages, lifted its protection of national industry, set single exchange and interest rates and opened up trade and capital accounts with the intention of readying cheapened national resources for transfer abroad. This essay traces the metamorphosis of the state bourgeois class in Arab socialist countries, namely Egypt, Iraq and Syria, into the neoliberal/comprador class. With the exception of Iraq, which collapsed from without by the force of outright occupation, the other states experienced gradual social erosion leading to massive uprisings from within. Under the weight of successive Arab defeats, the state bourgeois class structurally fulfilled the terms of surrender and underwent a transformation from surrogate national bourgeoisie to surrogate international financial bourgeoisie.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 91
Volume: 2012
Issue: 1
Year: 2012
Month: September
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/revisiting-arab-socialism/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WER-Vol1-No1-Article6-Kadri.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:91

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Alice H Amsden
Title: Grass Roots War on Poverty
Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa's failure to slay the dragon of poverty is due to a logical flaw in its policies: the remedies to reduce poverty don't address the causes. Poverty is caused by unemployment, owing to a scarcity of jobs that pay above bare subsistence, but grass-roots poverty alleviation measures are exclusively designed to make job-seekers more capable although no jobs are available. The 'appropriate' technologies of the grass roots movement that dominates anti-poverty policies are oriented towards consumption, ignoring production jobs. Poverty persists from low productivity in agriculture or outright landlessness. Irrigation and rural electrification are required to facilitate economic diversification into non-agricultural work. Yet irrigation and electrification require central political coordination and application of modern science and technology. Centralized decision- making is low on the agenda of the anti-poverty movement, with deep roots at the local level. To create employment requires capital investments to expand entrepreneurial opportunities and increase productive jobs. The most successful countries to grapple with poverty have 'scaled up,' not down; Big, not Small, is Beautiful. The statistical evidence for a large number of developing countries strongly supports the hypothesis of a trickle down effect, not a bottom up effect as the best way to beat poverty.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 114
Volume: 2012
Issue: 1
Year: 2012
Month: September
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/grass-roots-war-on-poverty/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WER-Vol1-No1-Article7-Amsden.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:114

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sebastian Dullien
Author-Name: Barbara Fritz
Author-Name: Laurissa Mühlich
Title: Regional Monetary Cooperation: Lessons from the Euro Crisis for Developing Areas?
Abstract: The euro crisis has highlighted the dilemmas of an ambitious regional monetary integration project with limited economic policy cooperation. What lessons can regional monetary cooperation schemes in other world regions draw from this experience? Three aspects of the euro crisis are identified as crucial: first, lack of fiscal cooperation, including the ability to enforce sovereign state insolvency; second, the need for a mechanism to extend lender-of-last-resort (LOLR) facilities to solvent yet illiquid sovereign member states; and third, the need for prudent financial regulation at the supra-national level. Against this background, the paper analyzes monetary cooperation schemes in South East Asia and Latin America, namely the Chiang Mai initiative, the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR), and the Asian Bond Market Initiative. While the euro zone faces the alternative of deepening or breaking up, the study shows that the cooperation schemes in Asia and Latin America – while less ambitious in scope – show surprisingly stable institutional settings despite little economic policy coordination. However, the euro experience shows that the need for deeper economic policy coordination increases as financial integration becomes more profound.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 1
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/regional-monetary-cooperation-lessons-from-the-euro-crisis-for-developing-areas/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Dullien.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:1

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Rajah Rasiah
Author-Name: Jebamalai Vinanchiarachi
Title: Institutional Support and Technological Upgrading: Evidence from Dynamic Clusters in Latin America and Asia
Abstract: In light of wide differences in economic outcomes in the world, this paper uses an evolutionary set of lenses to examine the clusters of Buenos Aires' automotive, Los Lagos' salmon, Penang's electronics and Qiaotou's buttons with an elucidating view towards evaluating the significance of institutional support in driving technological upgrading in firms. The purpose is to demonstrate if industrial and location specificities and industrial policy instruments matter in upgrading outcomes. The results show that transnational corporations drove automotive and electronics clusters in Buenos Aires and Penang respectively, while domestic firms dominated the origin of salmon and button clusters in Los Lagos and Qiaotou. Domestic organizations have been the prime drivers of upgrading in Los Lagos and Qiaotou. Whereas the meso organizations in Los Lagos adapt knowledge from frontier clusters abroad, they are the basis of knowledge generation in Qiaotou. Whatever the differences, the role of government through institutional change has been critical in stimulating upgrading, but the extent and nature of intervention in the four clusters were industry and location specific.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 24
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/institutional-support-and-technological-upgrading-evidence-from-dynamic-clusters-in-latin-america-and-asia/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Rasiah.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:24

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jacques-Olivier Charron
Title: Transacting Without Pricing, Pricing Without Transacting
Abstract: The paper argues in favor of a radical disconnection between the exchange function and the valuation function of financial markets. It defends it from an investee's point of view, mainly on the grounds that valuing financial assets is a matter of judgment. Financial assets do not have any intrinsic utility; hence allowing markets to price them implies their price changes are determined by expectations. These latter rely on information that can be variously framed and interpreted, hence no a priori and stable valuation criteria can prevail. Consequently, investees bear the consequences of judgments that do not meet basic criteria of justice. Insulating the valuation function from the transaction function of financial markets through the creation of independent valuation institutions could be a way to tackle this problem.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 48
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/transacting-without-pricing-pricing-without-transacting/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Charron.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:48

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Ronald J Colombo
Title: Merit Regulation via the Suitability Rules
Abstract: The philosophy underpinning federal securities regulation in the United States is one of disclosure. This has been the case since the inception of federal securities regulation in 1933,2 and continues to be the case with Congress's most recent enactments on the subject, contained in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.3 In the wake of the financial industry's collapse in 2008, and the recession it helped spark, some have questioned whether this paradigm remains advisable.4 They have suggested the introduction of merit regulation into the U.S. securities law regime, whereby the government would not merely mandate certain issuer disclosures, but would also prevent the offering of securities deemed too risky.5 Although not revolutionary (as several American states, and nations such as China, have a merit component to their securities laws), the concept of merit regulation is indeed largely alien to the scheme of U.S. federal securities regulation.6 As such, it would be a transformative development. There is, however, a far more modest way of approximating the same result. And it builds upon our existing regulatory infrastructure: suitability rules. Via enhancements to the suitability rules, policymakers can achieve much of what merit regulation promises, without the significant, accompanying drawbacks. Properly enhanced, such rules could provide a system that safeguards investors from unsuitably risky investments on a case-by-case basis, thereby depriving neither corporations, nor investors, of mutually beneficial opportunities that might be fully appropriate for them despite their inappropriateness for others. It could also furnish an additional tool by which authorities could regulate systemic risk. Like Caesar's Gaul, this Article is divided into three parts. Part I will describe the disclosure-based federal securities regulatory regime that prevails in the United States today. It will highlight the limitations of this regime, as underscored by merit-regulation proponents seeking its reform. Part II will describe merit regulation, both in theory and in practice. It too will end with an articulation of the drawbacks associated with such an approach. Part III will describe the “suitability rules” component of U.S. securities law, as they are currently formulated. Part III will also demonstrate how the suitability rules can be utilized to essentially achieve the desideratum of merit regulation without the costs associated therewith.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 54
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/merit-regulation-via-the-suitability-rules/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Colombo.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:54

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Bernard Vallageas
Title: Basel III and the Strengthening of Capital Requirement: The obstinacy in mistake or why “it” will happen again
Abstract: Since the financial liberalisation of the 80's, the Basel committee on Banking Supervision wants to strengthen banks' capital and other stable funding with the purpose of increasing banks' financial security, as stable funding increases the security of the non-financial business sector. But bank capital has nothing to do with bank security and with money creation. It is shown, instead, that increasing banks' stable funding entails a decreasing of the stable funding for the rest of the economy and securitization. Thus this strengthening is harmful and the way for the financial sector to work in the interest of the economy is to separate deposit banks and other financial institutions, to strengthen banks' control and to recognize they do not need capital, and therefore no owners.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 67
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/basel-iii-and-the-strengthening-of-capital-requirement-the-obstinacy-in-mistake-or-why-it-will-happen-again/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Vallageas.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:67

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Reinhard Schumacher
Title: Deconstructing the Theory of Comparative Advantage
Abstract: This article critically examines the theory of comparative advantage, which underlies the wide-spread support of worldwide trade liberalisations. Both the classical and neoclassical formulations of it are shortly discussed and its essential assumptions are scrutinised. These include the international immobility of capital and labour, balanced trade, the existence of an adjustment mechanism which is responsible for the transformation of comparative production advantages into absolute price advantages, full employment and the perception of international trade as a static and harmonious phenomenon. It is shown that all these assumptions are neither theoretical valid nor do they coincide with empirical research. The whole rationale why international trade exists according this theory is deficient. The New Trade Theory, which claims to enhance the theory of comparative advantage, is unconvincing as a complement. It is concluded that the theory of comparative advantage should be dismissed. International trade theory, by relying on this theory, risks ignoring the most relevant and important elements with regard to international trade. The deficiencies of the theory of comparative advantage are especially crucial for trade policies that are derived from this theory, which is discussed with reference to the WTO and its ongoing Doha Round. View the Open Peer Discussion of this paper »
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 83
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/deconstructing-the-theory-of-comparative-advantage/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Schumacher.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:83

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
Title: The Emergence of Profit and Interest in the Monetary Circuit
Abstract: Efficient progress of the monetary theory of production (MTP) is hampered by an unsatisfactory account of how profit and interest emerge in the monetary circuit. As matter of fact, this question puzzled already the classics. It seems evident that it cannot be answered by applying the usual tools. The present paper's purpose is to overcome the deadlock. This is done by setting the circulation approach on general structural axiomatic foundations. View the Open Peer Discussion of this paper »
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 106
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/the-emergence-of-profit-and-interest-in-the-monetary-circuit/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Kakarot-Handtke.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:106

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Deniz Kellecioglu
Title: Book Review: Why Nations fail – the origins of power, prosperity and poverty
Abstract: Why nations fail is a compelling contribution to the classic question of why some countries are poor and some rich, but it is also marred from several shortcomings and under-representations, which cast doubts on the positive messages of creating better institutions and reducing poverty.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 118
Volume: 2013
Issue: 2
Year: 2013
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/book-review-why-nations-fail-the-origins-of-power-prosperity-and-poverty/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER2-Kellecioglu.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2013:y:2013:i:2:p:118

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: James K. Galbraith
Author-Email: galbraith@mail.utexas.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, USA
Author-Name: J. Travis Hale
Author-Email: jtravishale@gmail.com
Author-Workplace-Name: LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, USA
Title: The Evolution of Economic Inequality in the United States, 1969-2012 : Evidence from Data on Inter-industrial Earnings and Inter-regional Incomes
Abstract: This paper provides measures of earnings inequality in the United States across economic sectors, measured within states, from 1969 through 2012, and of income inequality across counties, from 1969 through 2007. These measures permit detailed decomposition of changes in inequality, highlighting the major gainers and losers in relative terms. They illustrate the roles played by the financial sector, by the technology boom, by war-time public spending and by the real estate bubble in driving the evolution of economic inequality in the United States.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 1
Volume: 2014
Issue: 3
Year: 2014
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/the-evolution-of-economic-inequality-in-the-united-states-1969-2012/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-3-GalbraithHale.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2014:y:2014:i:3:p:1

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: John F Tomer
Title: Adverse Childhood Experiences, Poverty, and Inequality : Toward an Understanding of the Connections and the Cures
Abstract: Despite Alfred Marshall's early recognition of the importance of mothering, human capital theory scarcely reflects the role of the home environment as a factor influencing the production of human capital. This paper looks deeply into the earliest phase of child development to understand its implications for human capital theory. Recently, important noneconomic research has revealed the growth of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among young children and how this impairs their brain functioning. Accordingly, this paper explores the role of ACEs for understanding the growth of poverty and inequality. In contrast to other socio-economic theories explaining the growth of inequality of academic achievement, this paper focuses on the magnitude and growth of ACEs and poor parenting within the lower socio-economic class. Other theories no doubt have some validity, but if they leave out ACEs, they are missing a crucial causal factor. The implications of this theory for remedies to ACEs are explored. These remedies involve different ways to build human capital during the early childhood so that children will arrive at school with their brains unimpaired. The caring work of making human capital investments works better if they are part of a caring economy and part of a sensible human capital strategy.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 20
Volume: 2014
Issue: 3
Year: 2014
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/adverse-childhood-experiences-poverty-and-inequality/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-3-Tomer.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2014:y:2014:i:3:p:20

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stuart Birks
Author-Email: k.s.birks@massey.ac.nz
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Economics and Finance, Massey University, New Zealand
Title: Rethinking Economics: Downs with Traction
Abstract: Economic theory has relatively little to say about the policy making process. One exception is Anthony Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy which considers possible objectives for participants in the political process, and develops propositions on the operation of a democracy. Two key assumptions were no false information and no irrationality. As he acknowledged, neither is realistic. There is extensive literature, including writing by Adam Smith on rhetoric (deliberative eloquence) in political debate, and the significance of propaganda was recognised in the 1940s. Modern approaches to political processes, agenda setting, and discourse analysis also emphasise persuasion and framing. This paper builds on Downs' foundation by relaxing his assumptions. First, there is consideration of the nature of rhetoric, including “macro-rhetoric”. The effects of rhetoric on policy debate, and the importance of “traction” on political agendas are then considered. Propositions are presented indicating, in particular: policy issues will only be addressed spasmodically; few options will get attention; and there is likely to be poor monitoring. Consideration is then given to implications for economists and their approaches to policy.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 37
Volume: 2014
Issue: 3
Year: 2014
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/rethinking-economics-downs-with-traction/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-3-Birks.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2014:y:2014:i:3:p:37

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Hendrik Van den Berg
Author-Email: hvan-den-berg1@unl.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics, University of Nebraska, USA
Title: How the Culture of Economics Stops Economists from Studying Group Behavior and the Development of Social Cultures
Abstract: Economic thought evolved over the past two centuries to focus on individual behavior as the basis for all economic activity. Some heterodox economists have pointed to the importance of group behavior and the influence of organizations on economic activity, but the neoclassical paradigm, with the rational isolated individual as its main actor, prevails in mainstream economics. This paper presents a “sociology of economics” to explain why the culture of the field of economics effectively blinds its practitioners to the phenomenon of group behavior. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the paper details the field's methodology (habitus), which includes the assumptions of the rational and separable individual, and the belief system (doxa), consisting of the metaphors of the invisible hand and rational free choice, that supports the habitus. The culture of economics is firmly held in place by symbolic violence directed at those who question the prevailing culture. The paper further highlights the role of business and financial interests in supporting the prevailing culture of economics. In conclusion, a strong group culture, supported by powerful business and financial organizations, discourages economists from recognizing this group culture or the powerful organizations that support it.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 53
Volume: 2014
Issue: 3
Year: 2014
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/how-the-culture-of-economics-stops-economists-from-studying-group-behavior-and-the-development-of-social-cultures/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-3-VanDenBerg.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2014:y:2014:i:3:p:53

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Esteban Pérez Caldentey
Author-Workplace-Name: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
Author-Name: Daniel Titelman
Author-Workplace-Name: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
Author-Name: Pablo Carvallo
Author-Workplace-Name: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
Title: Weak Expansions: A Distinctive Feature of the Business Cycle in Latin America and the Caribbean
Abstract: Using two standard cycle methodologies (Classical and Deviation Cycle) and a comprehensive sample of 83 countries worldwide, including all developing regions, we show that the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) cycle exhibits two distinctive features. First, and most importantly, its expansion performance is shorter and for the most part less intense than that of the rest of the regions considered, and in particular than that of East Asia and the Pacific. East Asia and the Pacific's expansions last five years longer than those of LAC, and its output gain is 50% greater than that of LAC. Second, LAC tends to exhibit contractions that are not significantly different in terms of duration and amplitude than those of other regions. Both these features imply that the complete Latin American and Caribbean cycle has, overall, the shortest duration and smallest amplitude in relation to other regions. The specificities of the Latin American and Caribbean cycle are not confined to the short run. These are also reflected in variables such as productivity and investment, which are linked to long-run growth. East Asia and the Pacific's cumulative gain in labor productivity during the expansionary phase is twice that of LAC. Moreover, the evidence also shows that the effects of the contraction in public investment surpass those of the expansion leading to a declining trend over the entire cycle. In this sense we suggest that policy analysis needs to increase its focus on the expansionary phase of the cycle. Improving our knowledge of the differences in the expansionary dynamics of countries and regions, can further our understanding of the differences in their rates of growth and levels of development. We also suggest that while, the management of the cycle affects the short-run fluctuations of economic activity and hence volatility, it is not trend neutral. Hence, the effects of aggregate demand management policies may be more persistent over time and less transitory than currently thought.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 69
Volume: 2014
Issue: 3
Year: 2014
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/weak-expansions-a-distinctive-feature-of-the-business-cycle-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-3-CaldenteyEtAl.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2014:y:2014:i:3:p:69

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Pablo Ruiz Nápoles
Author-Email: ruizna@unam.mx
Author-Workplace-Name: Economics Department, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
Title: Macro Policies For Climate Change: Free Market Or State Intervention?
Abstract: The central issue studied in this essay is the meaning and implications for public policy of Nicholas Stern's statement that “Climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen” (Stern, 2006). To deal with this issue we analyze the two big currents about public policy measures in general: market oriented and state intervention. We also present the current conceptual framework for debating public policy for analyzing the policies recommended and applied so far, to deal with Climate Change's causes and effects, from an economic perspective. We present the main arguments of the Stern Review. Finally we get into the debate between Stern and Nordhaus. Our conclusion is that there is a need for strong state intervention to make the climate change mitigation policies to reach the desired effects.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 90
Volume: 2014
Issue: 3
Year: 2014
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/macro-policies-for-climate-change-free-market-or-state-intervention/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-3-Napoles.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2014:y:2014:i:3:p:90

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Fabian Lindner
Author-Email: fabian-lindner@boeckler.de
Author-Workplace-Name: Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK), Dusseldorf, Germany
Title: Does Saving Increase the Supply of Credit? A Critique of Loanable Funds Theory
Abstract: The paper presents a critique of loanable funds theory by using simple accounting relationships and standard excess demand analysis. It is shown that many economists identify saving and the credit supply by interpreting the macroeconomic saving-investment identity as a budget constraint. According to that interpretation, more saving through lower consumption (and government spending) leads to a higher supply of credit, lower interest rates and thus more funds to be used by firms for investment. The paper shows that proponents of this theory confuse quite different economic phenomena and commit serious fallacies of composition. In the first step, the concepts of “saving” and “credit” will be clearly distinguished using simple accounting. It will be shown that credit is not limited by anybody's saving and that no one has to abstain from consumption in order for a credit to be provided. Also, it will be shown that financial saving (an increase in net financial assets) through a reduction in expenditures reduces other economic units' revenues and thus their ability to spend and save. Using the concept of excess demand and supply, it will be shown that excess saving does not lead to an excess supply of credit − which would lower interest rates − but to an excess supply of goods, services and/or labor which will lower prices and production. How interest rates change is not determined by excess saving: They could increase, stay the same or decrease. Finally, it will be argued that the identification of saving with the provision of credit is likely to stem from the invalid application of neoclassical growth models to a monetary economy.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 1
Volume: 2015
Issue: 4
Year: 2015
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/does-saving-increase-the-supply-of-credit-a-critique-of-loanable-funds-theory/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-4-Lindner.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:4:p:1

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Matteo Cervellati
Author-Email: m.cervellati@unibo.it
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Bologna and IZA Bonn
Author-Name: Piergiuseppe Fortunato
Author-Email: Piergiuseppe.Fortunato@unctad.org
Author-Workplace-Name: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
Author-Name: Uwe Sunde
Author-Email: uwe.sunde@lmu.de
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Munich, IZA Bonn, CEPR London
Title: Roots and Fruits of Democracy: Natural Resources, Income Distribution and Social Violence
Abstract: This paper proposes the argument that natural resource abundance and large economic inequality, by shaping the interests of different social groups, are key factors for the determination of the transition scenario from authoritarianism to democracy. In turn, the transition scenario, and in particular the level of violence during democratization, determines the success or failure of a democratic reform. We analyze the historical experience of countries that democratized during the "third wave" of democratization in order to shed some light on the determinants and consequences of current and future democratic transitions.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 27
Volume: 2015
Issue: 4
Year: 2015
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/roots-and-fruits-of-democracy-natural-resources-income-distribution-and-social-violence/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-4-Cervellati-Fortunato-Sunde.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:4:p:27

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Woodward
Author-Workplace-Name: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Title: Incrementum ad Absurdum: Global Growth, Inequality and Poverty Eradication in a Carbon-Constrained World
Abstract: The paper seeks to assess the timeframe for eradication of poverty, defined by poverty lines of $1.25 and $5 per person per day at 2005 purchasing power parity, if pre-crisis (1993-2008) patterns of income growth were maintained indefinitely, taking account of the differential performance of China. On the basis of optimistic assumptions, and implicitly assuming an indefinite continuation of potentially important pro-poor shifts in development policies during the baseline period, it finds that eradication will take at least 100 years at $1.25-a-day, and 200 years at $5-a-day. While this could in principle be brought forward by accelerating global growth, global carbon constraints raise serious doubts about the viability of this course, particularly as global GDP would need to exceed $100,000 per capita at $1.25-a-day, and $1m per capita at $5-a-day. The clear implication is that poverty eradication, even at $1.25-a-day, and especially at a poverty line which better reflects the satisfaction of basic needs, can be reconciled with global carbon constraints only by a major increase in the share of the poorest in global economic growth, far beyond what can realistically be achieved by existing instruments of development policy – that is, by effective measures to reduce global inequality.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 43
Volume: 2015
Issue: 4
Year: 2015
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/incrementum-ad-absurdum-global-growth-inequality-and-poverty-eradication-in-a-carbon-constrained-world/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-4-Woodward.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:4:p:43

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Donald W. Katzner
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Massachusetts/Amherst, USA
Title: A Neoclassical Curmudgeon Looks at Heterodox Criticisms of Microeconomics
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to open a dialogue with heterodox economists about what, from a neoclassical perspective, is valid in heterodox criticisms of neoclassical microeconomics. Many heterodox criticisms of neoclassical microeconomics are valid to a neoclassicist; but some are not. Examples of both are given, mostly taken from E. Fullbrook's anthology, A Guide to What's Wrong with Economics, (London: Anthem, 2004). And neoclassical reasons for a lack of validity where that arises are provided. Both criticisms and the judgment of their validity can be subjective or objective.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 63
Volume: 2015
Issue: 4
Year: 2015
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/a-neoclassical-curmudgeon-looks-at-heterodox-criticisms-of-microeconomics/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-4-Katzner.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:4:p:63

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Richard Pereira
Author-Email: r.s.pereira@pgr.bham.ac.uk
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Birmingham, UK
Title: Universal Basic Income and the Cost Objection: What are we Waiting For?
Abstract: Among the most common objections to providing everyone with an unconditional basic income is the cost objection. It states that the cost of providing everyone with a decent income floor, beneath which no one would fall, is out of reach for governments and public finance. Income taxes would have to be raised to unacceptable levels to accomplish this, the objection claims. This paper addresses the objection by demonstrating its weaknesses and showing that a universal basic income is affordable. It is in fact more affordable than the current wasteful array of often counter-productive, bureaucratic income security programs. Better results can be achieved with lower costs by implementing basic income, or a guaranteed livable income. This study does not seek any cuts to vital public programs such as universal health care or education to attain the result of a basic income sufficient to cover one's needs for food, modest shelter etc. at all times. Personal income taxes are not raised in this proposal and they could even be cut, while improving health outcomes for individuals and reducing health burdens upon the current system resulting from a presently dysfunctional, outdated income security model.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 1
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/universal-basic-income-and-the-cost-objection-what-are-we-waiting-for/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Periera.pdf
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Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Christian Flamant
Author-Email: cflamant1@gmail.com
Author-Workplace-Name: Economist (retired) worked for AFD (French Development Agency), IMF and OECD
Title: Again on Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century or Why National Accounts and Three Simple Laws Should not be a Substitute for Economic Theory
Abstract: This paper reviews Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century. Although the facts described by Piketty are widely indisputable, the paper criticizes the actual economic theory underlying the central thesis of the book, and this on two main points: first the nature and thus the consistency of capital, and second the direction of causality. The paper discusses first the confusion made by Piketty between “capital” and “wealth” which for him cover the same economic reality, and shows that productive capital, real estate capital and net financial assets cannot be put on the same conceptual level. Secondly, it shows that the rate of return on capital as the ultimate explanatory factor for the growth in inequalities does not hold, because Piketty's three laws are not acceptable as such: the first one is a mere tautology, the second implies the identity of the long-term growth rates of income and capital, and for the third law the fact that r is greater than g is not in itself a sufficient condition for β and therefore α to increase. Even in Piketty's analysis it is not really r but s, the owners of capital's consumption choices, which drive capital accumulation. The paper finally proposes an alternative explanation for the evolution of developed economies over the last 35 years.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 22
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/again-on-pikettys-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-or-why-national-accounts-and-three-simple-laws-should-not-be-a-substitute-for-economic-theory/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Flamant.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:22

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Korkut Alp Ertürk
Author-Email: erturk@economics.utah.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Utah, USA
Author-Name: Jason Whittle
Author-Email: jmw22@utah.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Utah, USA
Title: Climate Change, Procrastination and Asymmetric Power
Abstract: This paper argues that policy conclusions of the economics of climate change literature based on “integrated assessment models” (IAM) fails to take into account the intricacies of collective action. Specifically, IAMs do not account for how asymmetric power between developed and undeveloped countries changes the former's pay off matrix with respect to mitigation and adaptation strategies. Using a simple one-sided prisoner's dilemma model, the paper illustrates how developed countries' power to externalize their emissions to the global commons skews their cost-benefit calculation in favor of putting off mitigation efforts into the future. Undeveloped countries on the other hand are incentivized to act in concert to deter developed countries from passing their climate costs onto them in the present. The extent to which they may succeed in doing so also helps developed countries overcome their short-termism on climate change policy.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 40
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/climate-change-procrastination-and-asymmetric-power/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Erturk-Whittle.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:40

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Noah Wright
Author-Workplace-Name: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin, USA
Title: Data Visualization in Capital in the 21st Century
Abstract: This paper examines how data visualization is used to supplement the arguments in Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. Piketty shows a consistent pattern of modifying his visualizations to provide stronger support for his arguments than his data contains, particularly in his visualizations of the rate of return on capital as it compares to the rate of economic growth, one of the central arguments of the book. This modification takes the form of using disproportionate axis units and the addition of estimated or speculative context. The effect of this modification is to change the fundamental shape of the data trends, which can be clearly seen when proportional axes are used and hypothetical context removed.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 54
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/data-visualization-in-capital-in-the-21st-century/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Wright.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:54

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Gavin R. Putland
Author-Workplace-Name: Land Values Research Group, Prosper Australia
Title: The Price Cannot be Right: Taxation, Sub-Intrinsic-Value Housing Bubbles, and Financial Instability
Abstract: A “general formula” for the rental yield of a property is derived in terms of an exponential appreciation rate, a discount rate, a holding time, and a set of tax parameters, on the hypothesis that prices reflect net present values (NPVs) of future cash flows. Special cases are noted and interpreted. The formula explains the counterintuitive observation that a stamp duty on the purchaser can reduce the price by more than the value of the duty, and similarly predicts that a subsidy for the purchaser can raise the price by more than the value of the subsidy. But for some combinations of inputs, the formula predicts prices that clearly exceed buyers' capacity to service loans. If the financial system tries to support such high prices, there will be a sub-intrinsic- value bubble – a condition in which prices, although lower than NPVs, are unsustainable due to unserviceable debt. The suggested remedy is to change the tax mix so as to bring NPVs within buyers' capacity to service loans. This can be done by relying more heavily on land tax or capital-gain tax. As the latter does not need to be paid out of current income, it is more conducive to home ownership.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 73
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/the-price-cannot-be-right-taxation-sub-intrinsic-value-housing-bubbles-and-financial-instability/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Putland.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:73

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Bob Milward
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Central Lancashire, UK
Title: On the Historical, Moral and Economic Arguments for Asymmetric Trading Regimes: the case of sub-Saharan Africa
Abstract: The Least Developed Countries Report 2006 argued that a paradigm shift in national and international policies to promote development and poverty reduction is required because current policies are inadequate and have failed to develop productive capacities in the underdeveloped economies. However, the policies that are advocated do not deal with the fundamental question of how the new paradigm should differ in its approach to trading regimes currently in operation. In this paper we address this in terms of the arguments against the comparative advantage orthodoxy of free trade and for the acceptance of an asymmetric trading regime for sub-Saharan Africa based on the history of economic development and the underlying moral imperative.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 87
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/on-the-historical-moral-and-economic-arguments-for-asymmetric-trading-regimes-the-case-of-sub-saharan-africa/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Milward.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:87

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Russell K. Standish
Author-Workplace-Name: University of New South Wales, Australia
Author-Name: Stephen L. Keen
Author-Workplace-Name: Kingston University, London
Title: Rationality in the Theory of the Firm
Abstract: We have previously presented a critique of the standard Marshallian theory of the firm, and developed an alternative formulation that better agreed with the results of simulation. An incorrect mathematical fact was used in our previous presentation. This paper deals with correcting the derivation of the Keen equilibrium, and generalising the result to the asymmetric case. As well, we discuss the notion of rationality employed, and how this plays out in a two player version of the game.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 101
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/rationality-in-the-theory-of-the-firm/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Standish-Keen.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:101

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Rosnick
Title: Toward an Understanding of Keen and Standish's Theory of the Firm: A Comment
Abstract: In a series of papers, Steve Keen and Russell Standish criticize the textbook approaches to firm behavior under conditions of perfect and imperfect competition. These papers misstate the assumptions underlying the models and err in mathematics. The critiques do not follow through on their theoretical arguments, and do not explain what drives the results of their computer simulations. Consequently, their contributions confuse rather than clarify understanding of firm behavior.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 107
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/toward-an-understanding-of-keen-and-standishs-theory-of-the-firm-a-comment/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Rosnick.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:107

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: David Rosnick
Title: Technical Appendix: A Better Response to Keen-Standish “hill climbers”
Abstract:
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 124
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/technical-appendix-a-better-response-to-keen-standish-hill-climbers/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Rosnick-TA-1.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:124

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Russell K. Standish
Author-Workplace-Name: University of New South Wales, Australia
Author-Name: Stephen L. Keen
Author-Workplace-Name: Kingston University, London
Title: Response to David Rosnick's “Toward an Understanding of Keen and Standish's Theory of the Firm: A Comment”
Abstract:
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 130
Volume: 2015
Issue: 5
Year: 2015
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/response-to-david-rosnicks-toward-an-understanding-of-keen-and-standishs-theory-of-the-firm-a-comment/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-5-Standish-Keen-response.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2015:y:2015:i:5:p:130

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sheila Dow
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Stirling, UK and University of Victoria, Canada
Title: Ontology and Theory for a Redesign of European Monetary Union
Abstract: The Greek debt crisis opened up the policy discourse over Europe to the extent of an unprecedented extent of questioning of the original design of the Eurozone. Such a rethink requires an examination of how the European economy functions and the appropriate theoretical approach to analysing it. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the thinking behind the design of European Monetary Union and behind the Post Keynesian critique. While the mainstream response is couched in terms of addressing impediments to economic convergence through market forces, the Post Keynesian response focuses on the forces for divergence which the Eurozone framework currently exacerbates. In particular we argue that a focus on the forces for economic divergence and financial instability in Europe requires any monetary union to be supported by a system of fiscal support and a cohesive approach to bank regulation and support.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 1
Volume: 2016
Issue: 6
Year: 2016
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/ontology-and-theory-for-a-redesign-of-european-monetary-union/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-6-Dow.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:6:p:1

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Stefano Lucarelli
Author-Workplace-Name: Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy and CES, Université Paris 1, France
Author-Name: Roberto Romano
Author-Workplace-Name: IGCL (Italian General Confederation of Labour)
Title: The Italian Crisis within the European Crisis. The Relevance of the Technological Foreign Constraint
Abstract: The debate on the Italian economic crisis in the Euro zone should address a fundamental issue: what is the origin of the decline in productivity that affected the Italian economic system even before the European crisis begun in 2010? We argue that the effective demand can be revived only by governing the structural economic dynamics. Embracing a theoretical approach that may be called “structuralism” in line with the contributions by Leon (1965), Sylos Labini (1977) and Pasinetti (1993), we will propose to analyze the technological causes that may explain the balance-of-payment constraint affecting year by year the Italian growth. In this perspective we will introduce the notion of technological foreign constraint. We will argue that such a phenomenon, not the increasing public debt, constitutes the shock that deteriorated the Italian labour productivity in the last twenty five years. In the last part of the article we will also present an empirical proof of the previous thesis, by showing the technological dependence of the Italian economic system by the German economic system, through the estimation of the productivity gap equation. We propose this equation drawing inspiration from Paolo Sylos Labini (1984, 1993, 2004).
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 12
Volume: 2016
Issue: 6
Year: 2016
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/the-italian-crisis-within-the-european-crisis-the-relevance-of-the-technological-foreign-constraint/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-6-LucarelliRomano.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:6:p:12

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Malcolm Sawyer
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Leeds, UK
Title: The Economic and Monetary Union: Past and Present Failures and some Future Possibilities
Abstract: The Economic and Monetary Union was constructed on poor foundations which sought to impose inappropriate macroeconomic policies. This construction did not pay heed to the differences between countries with regard to their economic position and interests nor to the institutional and historical differences. The EMU was faltering before the financial crisis which highlighted and added to the problems of EMU. The neo- and ordo-liberal constraints on policy and policy reform are indicated. The outline of a policy agenda for prosperity in EMU is given.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 31
Volume: 2016
Issue: 6
Year: 2016
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/the-economic-and-monetary-union-past-and-present-failures-and-some-future-possibilities/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-6-Sawyer.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:6:p:31

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Irene Sotiropoulou
Author-Workplace-Name: Independent Researcher
Title: Solidarity, Grassroots Initiatives and Power Relations
Abstract: Although solidarity is not a recent phenomenon, the emergence of new or re-invented forms of production and sharing that are based on that principle, has raised again several burning questions of what solidarity is and how far it can go, particularly under circumstances that may prove devastating for individuals, households and communities. The present paper is a result of both theoretical and empirical research regarding several types of grassroots initiatives which have functioned in Greece during the last six years. It investigates solidarity-related economic structures in order to clarify related questions, shows the complexity of practiced solidarity, identifies the main lines where solidarity might collide with power at the expense of the disadvantaged, and explores possible means of preventing power from invading those structures and thereby interfering with the survival of people and their communities.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 44
Volume: 2016
Issue: 6
Year: 2016
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/solidarity-grassroots-initiatives-and-power-relations/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-6-Sotiropoulou.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:6:p:44

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Jean Mouline Lyon III, France
Title: Mediterranean Death Trip – The Mare Internum as the Graveyard of International Obligations
Abstract: This article examines the situation of the boat people of Europe. Given that this issue affects some politically sensitive and legally delicate notions, including for example the sovereignty and jurisdiction of States, provisions and scopes of norms, nature and control of borders, rights and protection of migrants, and imputability and responsibility of acts, it is important to exercise care and rigor. In light of this, the article questions them all via the international obligations the States have to respect. The legal regimes that are to be applied to the boat people of Europe are scrutinized, examining the uncertain spaces at the margins of law and rights that the boat people of Europe have entered.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 60
Volume: 2016
Issue: 6
Year: 2016
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/mediterranean-death-trip-the-mare-internum-as-the-graveyard-of-international-obligations/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-6-Basilien-Gainche.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:6:p:60

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Timothy A. Wunder
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Title: Setting a Principal to Interest Cap on the Issuance of Home Mortgages: a Proposed Change to Mortgage Underwriting Rules Designed to Control Housing Price Inflation
Abstract: Traditionally most home buyers in the US need a mortgage and the current system of mortgage origination creates an incentive for borrowers to offer bids on homes far higher than would be possible without that system. This has inflated home values, increased financial indebtedness, and has increased banking profits without extensively helping other players in the market. Over the past 50 years it has become easier to get a mortgage and it has become common for people to buy homes with little down and long repayment times. The result has been that for many borrowers almost all of the mortgage payment goes to pay for interest on the loan. In the 1950s, housing accounted for 22% of the household budget; that rose to 33% by 1980 and 43% today. The mortgage industry is supposed to help foster affordable home ownership yet, as currently instituted, it has resulted far greater expense leading to further hardships for those Americans with low incomes. This essay will explore how a rule to cap the principal to interest ratio in mortgage payments would impact the relevant institutions and offer an overview of how such a rule would guide society to a more socially desirable outcome.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 86
Volume: 2016
Issue: 6
Year: 2016
Month: February
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/setting-a-principal-to-interest-cap-on-the-issuance-of-home-mortgages-a-proposed-change-to-mortgage-underwriting-rules-designed-to-control-housing-price-inflation/
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File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-6-Wunder.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:6:p:86

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: L. Randall Wray
Author-Email: wray@levy.org
Author-Workplace-Name: Professor of Economics, Bard College, NY, USA
Title: Taxes are for Redemption, Not Spending
Abstract: Fiscal austerity has become the mantra, the solution to the world's problems. Unemployment and slow growth? More austerity. High interest rates and rising debt ratios? More austerity. Inflation? More austerity. Deflation? More austerity. Budget deficits or trade deficits? More austerity. One size fits all. In one short article, it is impossible to deal with all of the arguments for fiscal austerity. In this piece I'm going to tackle just one justification: that government faces a budget constraint similar to that of households. Hence, even if we wanted to loosen fiscal policy, we might not be able to do so due to financial constraints. Indeed, by tightening now we create fiscal space that might be needed in the future. In the orthodox view, government's spending is constrained by the sum of its tax revenue, bond sales, and money creation. Bond sales, in turn, are limited to the nongovernment sectors' willingness to lend to government; as sales increase, the interest rate required to bring forth buyers rises – which eventually creates a vicious cycle of rising rates and bigger deficits. Running the printing presses to finance deficits raises the spectre of inflation, with too much money chasing too few goods. Hence, prudency dictates relying on taxes to pay for most government spending. The belief that government needs tax revenue to pay for most (or even all) of its spending is nearly universal. It wasn't always so. At the end of WWII it was commonly understood by economists from the right (Milton Friedman) to the left (Abba Lerner) that taxes are not needed for revenue purposes. Indeed, the Chairman of the NY Fed, Beardsley Ruml, even wrote a piece entitled “Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete”. None of these economists were arguing that we should dispense with taxes – which can be used for a variety of purposes. Rather, they recognized that unlike a household or firm, government does not need income to finance its spending. We can go even further and argue that government needs to spend before it can receive income. Indeed, while everyone looks at tax “revenue” as the government's equivalent to “income”, this view actually prevents understanding. We should instead understand “revenue” as “redemption”. As I'll show, from the time of the American colonies through the early postwar period, this is the way that many regarded taxes.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 3 - 11
Volume: 2016
Issue: 7
Year: 2016
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/taxes-are-for-redemption-not-spending/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-7-Wray.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:7:p:3

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Scott T. Fullwiler
Author-Email: scott.fullwiler@gmail.com
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Missouri-Kansas City and Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity
Title: The Debt Ratio and Sustainable Macroeconomic Policy
Abstract: Neoclassical views on fiscal sustainability are based on several assumptions that are inconsistent with accounting and operational realities of the money system, including dangers of “bond vigilantes” in government debt markets and “printing money” is inherently inflationary. Combining these assumptions with the broader world view of monetary policy as the appropriate sole manager of the macroeconomy, neoclassicals essentially define fiscal sustainability as a policy mix in which fiscal policy “gets out of the way” of “monetary dominance”, defined as the central bank's ability to independently pursue an “optimal” monetary policy. This paper presents an alternative view consistent with real-world accounting and monetary operations; a policy mix in which fiscal policy has an active role is shown to be a more sustainable one. Perhaps surprisingly, this turns out to also not be subject to the neoclassical fears or concerns of a policy regime of fiscal dominance.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 12 - 42
Volume: 2016
Issue: 7
Year: 2016
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/the-debt-ratio-and-sustainable-macroeconomic-policy/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-7-Fullwiler.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:7:p:12

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: William Mitchell
Author-Email: bill.mitchell@newcastle.edu.au
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Newcastle, Australia
Title: Eurozone Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale
Abstract: This paper is drawn from Mitchell (2015), which traced the origins of the Eurozone back to the desire in the immediate post-World War II period to end the destructive Franco-German rivalry that had caused several major military conflicts, which culminated in German aggression in 1939. Against this background, Mitchell (2015) also examines the way in which the discussions of European economic integration, which had initially begun with the general context of a Keynesian approach to economic policymaking, were transformed by the emergence of Monetarism in the 1970s. The flawed design of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that was finally agreed on and formulated in the Maastricht Treaty in 1991 reflected both these elements. The dysfunctional response to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is a direct result of the mistakes made in the lead up to Maastricht and reflect the dominance of what we might call neo-liberal Groupthink over sound macroeconomic management.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 43 - 55
Volume: 2016
Issue: 7
Year: 2016
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/eurozone-groupthink-and-denial-on-a-grand-scale/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-7-Mitchell.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:7:p:43

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid
Author-Email: mbrid@economia.unam.mx
Author-Workplace-Name: Professor, Facultad de Economía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Author-Name: Noel Pérez-Benítez
Author-Email: nperez.ibd@senado.gob.mx
Author-Workplace-Name: General Director of Finance, Instituto Belisario Domínguez
Author-Name: Héctor J. Villarreal
Author-Email: hectorvillarreal@ciep.mx
Author-Workplace-Name: Director, Centro de Investigación Económica y Presupuestaria A.C. and Professor, Tecnológico de Monterrey
Title: Austerity in Mexico: Economic Impacts and Unpleasant Choices Ahead
Abstract: Mexico has a long history of dealing with austerity as a tool to achieve fiscal consolidation. During the last 40 years, the country has repeatedly implemented programs for austerity and consolidation aimed at reducing fiscal imbalances, derived, in part, from acute macroeconomic crises. Since the late eighties, it has followed a more prudent approach to managing public finances and has avoided large deficits. However, the current outlook on Mexico's fiscal performance is complicated. Mounting pressures to raise expenditure, along with major changes in its composition, and structural fragilities in fiscal revenues, have resulted in eight years of public deficits and increasing debt. Further complicating this situation, in recent years, public finances have been significantly affected by adverse external shocks in the oil market. Not surprisingly, questions are emerging about the extent to which austerity will mark the current efforts to consolidate the fiscal accounts and whether it will lead them to a sustainable trajectory. This article starts with a brief discussion around the definition of austerity and fiscal consolidation. It then puts forward a historical analysis of the fiscal austerity episodes that Mexico has experienced during the last four decades. Subsequently it identifies the effects that public spending cuts have had on investment and economic growth in Mexico. Next, it analyses the evolution of Mexico's public finances, and how the successful attempt to implement a countercyclical policy in 2008-09 was short lived as fiscal policy soon became expansionary. Finally, it explores the expenditure pressures and the unpleasant choices on fiscal matters that Mexico will very soon have to make, as resources will most likely be insufficient to meet urgent investment requirements and pressing social spending needs.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 56 - 68
Volume: 2016
Issue: 7
Year: 2016
Month: July
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/austerity-in-mexico-economic-impacts-and-unpleasant-choices-ahead/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WER-7-Moreno-Brid-et-al.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2016:y:2016:i:7:p:56

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Jean François Bissonnette
Author-Email: jfbissonnette@u-paris10.fr
Author-Workplace-Name: Sophiapol, Université Paris Nanterre, France
Author-Name: Christian Laval
Author-Email: chr.laval@wanadoo.fr
Author-Workplace-Name: Sophiapol, Université Paris Nanterre, France
Title: Gambling with “Human Capital”: on the Speculative Logic of the “Knowledge Economy”
Abstract: The educational and academic fields have not been spared by the neoliberal logic. They indeed became one of its primary targets. Critics of neoliberalism too often neglect this, for they merely see in the latter a doctrine exclusively concerned with economic policy. They forget that knowledge constituted in fact a central element of the various approaches that contributed to the neoliberal synthesis.1 The “knowledge economy”, as it is often called, is the paradigmatic product of this synthesis. It holds that economic growth is set to become ever more “knowledge intensive”, and thus, that only those economic and political actors who manage to produce and make use of the rarest innovations and skills will prevail in the global competition between firms and the nation states that champion them...
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 6 - 17
Volume: 2017
Issue: 8
Year: 2017
Month: April
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/gambling-with-human-capital-on-the-speculative-logic-of-the-knowledge-economy/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WSER-8-Bissonnette-Laval.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2017:y:2017:i:8:p:6

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Sasha Breger Bush
Author-Email: Sasha.Breger@ucdenver.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Colorado Denver, USA
Author-Name: Lucy Ware McGuffey
Author-Email: Lucy.Mcguffey@ucdenver.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Colorado Denver, USA
Author-Name: Tony Robinson
Author-Email: Tony.Robinson@ucdenver.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Colorado Denver, USA
Title: Neoliberalism in the Academy: Dispatch from a Public University in Colorado
Abstract: Neoliberalism's influence in higher education is broad and deep. We focus on three interrelated dynamics, all manifestations of neoliberalization in higher education: labor flexibilization, bureaucratization, and corporatization. Through these channels, neoliberalization is impacting the nature and quality of the education that our students receive, as well as the academic freedom, professional respect, and quality of life we enjoy as professors. Giving flesh to this analysis, we pepper the discussion with personal insights based on our own experiences teaching together at a public higher education institution. We three authors perform different duties and roles in the same department. One of us demoted herself from the tenure-track two decades ago in order to focus on teaching, and finds herself just as distracted from her students today as she was then. Following many years of contingent appointments and sporadic unemployment, one of us just recently obtained a tenure-track position, a “promotion” that has actually undermined her teaching and her research in unexpected ways. Finally, one of us is a reluctant manager, a department chair who longs to support the creative innovations of department faculty, but who labors constantly under an increasingly heavy burden of administrative oversight and reporting.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 18 - 31
Volume: 2017
Issue: 8
Year: 2017
Month: April
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/neoliberalism-in-the-academy-dispatch-from-a-public-university-in-colorado/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WSER-8-Breger-Bush-et-al.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2017:y:2017:i:8:p:18

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: César Guzmán-Concha
Author-Email: cesarguz@gmail.com
Author-Workplace-Name: Center for Social Movement Studies, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy
Title: Undoing the Neoliberal Higher Education System? Student Protests and the Bachelet Reforms in Chile
Abstract: This article focuses on the education reforms of the current government of Michelle Bachelet (Chile, 2014-2018) triggered by the large student protests of 2011 – the “Chilean winter” – and the overwhelming support of the public for the movement's demands. The students' main demands included free education and a greater involvement of the state in education. The parties of the centre-left alliance, then the opposition, embraced these demands and promised broad educational reforms including free post-secondary education. After the center-left coalition (Nueva Mayoría, New Majority) won the presidential election it introduced three major education bills: the “short law” of free education, the creation of two new public universities and fifteen Centers of Technical Formation, and the reform of higher education's regulatory framework (still under discussion in parliament). While these bills are aimed at increasing the state's role in higher education, they fall far short of the students' aspirations. In fact, as implemented the bill have consolidated a mixed public-private higher education model resting on a vision of post-secondary education as a marketplace in which institutions compete for students, subsidies and funding. The conclusion discusses the inherent limitations of these reforms, especially how the weakness of the welfare coalition made it impossible to transform the students' demands into sustainable higher education policy.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 32 - 43
Volume: 2017
Issue: 8
Year: 2017
Month: April
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/undoing-the-neoliberal-higher-education-system-student-protests-and-the-bachelet-reforms-in-chile/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WSER-8-Guzmán-Concha.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2017:y:2017:i:8:p:32

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cecilia Rikap
Author-Email: ceciliarikap@gmail.com
Author-Workplace-Name: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina. University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Centre of Economics of University Paris Nord, University Paris 13, France
Title: The Corporization of a Public University with Free Undergraduate Education: Endangering Autonomy at the University of Buenos Aires
Abstract: In this article we will argue that, despite offering free undergraduate education, the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) has become a market university. As all the other public universities in Argentina, the UBA offers free undergraduate education in all its faculties. Maybe this is why this university has not called the attention of the economic literature when analysing the development of what has been called the academic enterprise (Larsen, 2011), the academic capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997), the market-university (Berman, 2011) or the entrepreneurial university (Etzkowitz, 2008; Etzkowitz et al., 1998). This transformation not only affected its autonomy, orienting teaching and research, but it has also reduced the UBA's researchers time to perform new or creative research encouraging faculty to sell technical assistances and other routine activities...
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 44 - 59
Volume: 2017
Issue: 8
Year: 2017
Month: April
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/the-corporization-of-a-public-university-with-free-undergraduate-education-endangering-autonomy-at-the-university-of-buenos-aires/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WSER-8-Rikap.pdf
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Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2017:y:2017:i:8:p:44

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Cathy Wagner
Author-Workplace-Name: Miami University, Miami University and Miami University / University of the Witwatersrand
Author-Name: Theresa Kulbaga
Author-Workplace-Name: Miami University, Miami University and Miami University / University of the Witwatersrand
Author-Name: Jennifer Cohen
Author-Email: cohenje@miamioh.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: Miami University, Miami University and Miami University / University of the Witwatersrand
Title: Imperial Partitioning in the Neoliberal University
Abstract: This paper tells the story of boundaries redrawn within a public university, specifically between the university and its regional campuses, as well as concerned faculty members' attempts to respond and resist, in part through actions taken by a new advocacy chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). As with imperial partitioning, the new boundaries pulled some culturally distinct academic units together and severed connections between others. We focus on one example: the creation of a new regional campus division – the College of Liberal Arts and Applied Science (CLAAS) – that differentiates regional students, faculty, and academic units from the university's elite “public ivy” brand. The university established a new set of boundaries between its main and regional campuses, forcing the creation of the new regional division, new departments, and new undergraduate majors, many with an “applied” orientation. We argue that this process of “differentiation,” the creation and maintenance of difference, is, in practice, the production of inequality, which disadvantages regional campus students as well as members of the regional faculty.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 60 - 77
Volume: 2017
Issue: 8
Year: 2017
Month: April
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/imperial-partitioning-in-the-neoliberal-university/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WSER-8-Wagner-et-al.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2017:y:2017:i:8:p:60

Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Taavi Sundell
Author-Email: taavi.sundell@helsinki.fi
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Helsinki, Finland
Author-Name: Teivo Teivainen
Author-Email: teivo.teivainen@helsinki.fi
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Helsinki, Finland
Title: Fuzzy Privatization and Decline of Democracy at the University of Helsinki
Abstract: Privatization is often used as a self-evident concept, overlapping with corporatization, marketization, commodification and neoliberalization. Our analysis, focusing on changes in the legal status and decision- making procedures at the University of Helsinki, explores the fuzzy nature of privatization. One of our claims is that the fuzziness helped prevent efficient resistance and therefore also enabled less democratic forms of governance. We will explore the ambiguous nature of the privatization process. We will analyze argumentative strategies about the reforms, focusing on explicit and implicit references to the processes of privatization and corporatization. The role of fuzziness became less important once privatization had taken crucial steps. At that moment, the argument that in some important sense the university had become part of the sphere of private economy became a justification for transforming the decision-making system of the university. References to the university being increasingly private, financially autonomous, and economically responsible become justificatory tools for dismantling democratic elements of the university's decision-making system. We will also analyze how privatization can affect democracy through changes in the allocation of public funding to universities.
Journal: World Social and Economic Review
Pages: 78 - 92
Volume: 2017
Issue: 8
Year: 2017
Month: April
File-URL: http://wser.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/fuzzy-privatization-and-decline-of-democracy-at-the-university-of-helsinki/
File-Format: text/html
File-URL: http://wer.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/WEA-WSER-8-Sundell-Teivainen.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:wea:worler:v:2017:y:2017:i:8:p:78