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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2015‒02‒22
twenty papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Mavroudeas, Stavros D. (University of Macedonia) |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the alternative explanations offered to explain the Greek crisis and checks there analytical and empirical validity. The first part focuses on the mainstream explanations. It distinguishes three main versions (‘Greek disease’, EMU is an unrectifiable non-OCA, EMU has problems but can be rectified). Mainstream explanations are criticized for failing to comprehend properly the deep structural dimensions of the Greek crisis and attributing it to policy errors. The second part reviews the radical explanations and particularly those around the ‘financialization thesis’. It also distinguishes three versions (EMU is the problem, Minskian case, equilibrium of class struggle). These explanations are criticized for offering a weak structural explanation of the Greek crisis by focusing upon policy or conjectural elements. The last part surveys the more classical Marxist explanations of the Greek crisis. These have a different understanding of the relationship between real and financial accumulation from all the previous explanations. Three versions are presented (TRPF, TRPF and underconsumption, TRPF and imperialist exploitation). It is argued that Marxist explanations grasp better than the rest the deep structural dimensions of the Greek crisis. |
| Keywords: | Greek economic crisis; Eurozone crisis |
| JEL: | B50 E65 F50 H60 |
| Date: | 2015–02–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kngedp:2015_001&r=hme |
| By: | Terry L. Anderson (Hoover Institution) |
| Abstract: | This essay argues that the focus of ecology and economics on equilibria and externalities misses the dynamic connection between humans and nature and that there is a better alternative for linking ecology with economics, one that builds on the teachings of Nobel laureates Friedrich Hayek and Ronald Coase. |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hoo:wpaper:15102&r=hme |
| By: | Giovanni Dosi; Luigi Marengo; Evita Paraskevopoulou; Marco Valente |
| Abstract: | This work analyzes and models the nature and dynamics of organizational memory, as such an essential ingredient of organizational capabilities. There are two sides to it, namely a cognitive side, involving the beliefs and interpretative frameworks by which the organization categorizes the states of the world and its own internal states, and an operational one, including routines and procedures that store the knowledge of how to do things. We formalize both types of memory by means of evolving systems of condition-action rules and investigate their performance in different environments characterized by varying degrees of complexity and non-stationarity. Broadly speaking, in simple and stable environments memory does not matter, provided it satisfies some minimal requirements. In more complex and gradually changing ones more memory is better. However there is some critical level of environmental instability above which forgetfulness is evolutionary superior from the point of view of long term performance. Moreover, above some (modest) complexity threshold stable and robust cognitive categorizations and routinized behavior emerge. |
| Keywords: | organizational memory, routines, cognitive categories, condition-action rules |
| Date: | 2015–04–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2015/01&r=hme |
| By: | Gao, Yuning; Zheng, Yunfeng; Hu, Angang; Meng, Bo |
| Abstract: | The rapid growth of China's economy has brought about huge losses of natural capital in the form of natural resource depletion and damages from carbon emissions. This paper recalculates value added, capital formation, capital stock, and related multifactor productivity in China's industrial sectors by further developing the genuine savings method of the World Bank. The sector-level natural capital loss was calculated using China's official input–output table and their extensions for tracing final consumers. The capital output elasticity in the productivity estimation was adjusted based on these tables. The results show that although the loss of natural capital in China's industrial sectors in terms of value added has slowed, the impacts on their productivity during the past decades is still quite clear. |
| Keywords: | China, Input-output tables, Economic sector, Productivity |
| JEL: | C67 E01 O4 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper490&r=hme |
| By: | Anael Labigne (Stifterverband); Olga N. Kononykhina (Hertie School of Governance); Irina V. Mersianova (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Following a public sphere approach to civil society research, we develop a working definition of Critical Capacity to analyze what leaders of Russian nonprofit organizations (NPOs) say regarding their political embeddedness. Theoretically, we stress the value added of differentiating more explicitly between the nonprofit sector, the third sector and civil society – the Critical Capacity concept represents a way forward towards applying that essential differentiation. Empirically, factor analysis on representative and current survey data confirms four dimensions of Critical Capacity, namely NPO leaders’ attitudes toward the role of the state, other NPOs, international cooperation as well as recent political events. In a second step, and based on these four dimensions, a cluster analytical model helps us to identify six reliable opinion clusters as well as the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of each group. Finally, we conclude on strength and weaknesses of our approach and address further research |
| Keywords: | cluster analysis; critical capacity, civil society; institutionalism, nonprofit sector; public sphere; Russia; third sector |
| JEL: | C21 D64 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:59/soc/2015&r=hme |
| By: | Daniele Rotolo (SPRU, University of Sussex, UK; School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States); Diana Hicks (School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States); Ben Martin (SPRU, University of Sussex, UK; Centre for Science and Policy (CSAP) and Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK) |
| Abstract: | Despite the growing interest around the emergence of novel technologies, especially from the policy-making perspective, there is still no consensus on what classifies a technology as ’emergent’. The present paper aims to fill this gap by developing a definition of ’emerging technologies’ and a framework for their detection and analysis. The definition is developed by combining a basic understanding of the term and in particular the concept of ’emergence’ with a review of key innovation studies dealing with definitional issues of technological emergence. The resulting definition identifies five attributes that feature in the emergence of novel technologies. These are: (i) radical novelty, (ii) relatively fast growth, (iii) coherence, (iv) prominent impact, and (v) uncertainty and ambiguity. The conceptual effort is then used to develop a framework for the operationalisation of the proposed attributes. To do so, we identify and review major empirical approaches (mainly in, although not limited to, the scientometric domain) for the detection and study of emerging technologies (these include indicators and trend analysis, citation analysis, co-word analysis, overlay mapping, and combinations thereof) and elaborate on how these can be used to operationalise the different attributes of emergence. |
| Keywords: | emerging technologies; conceptualisation; definition; operationalisation; scientometrics; indicators |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sru:ssewps:2015-06&r=hme |
| By: | Hoff, Karla |
| Abstract: | Behavioral economics recognizes that mental models -- intuitive sets of ideas about how things work -- can bias an individual's perceptions of himself and the world. By representing an ascriptive category of people as unworthy, a mental model can foster unjust social exclusion of, for example, a race, gender, caste, or class. Since the representation is a social construction, shouldn't society be able to control it? But how? This paper considers three interventions that have had some success in developing countries: (1) Group deliberation in Senegal challenged the traditional mental model of female genital cutting and contributed to the abandonment of the practice; (2) political reservations for women and low castes in India improved the way men perceived women, the way parents perceived their daughters, and the way women perceived themselves, but have not generally had positive effects on the low castes; and (3) reductions in the salience of identity closed performance gaps between dominant and stigmatized groups in experiments in India and China. Spoiled collective identities need to be changed or made less prominent in order to overcome social exclusion. |
| Keywords: | Educational Sciences,Primary Education,Anthropology,Knowledge for Development,Tertiary Education |
| Date: | 2015–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7198&r=hme |
| By: | Rex McKenzie (School of Economics and Business Sciences, University of Witwatersrand) |
| Abstract: | This paper focuses on the relationship between financialisation and inequality in South Africa. As such, the focus is on the importance/significance of finance and the financial sector in perpetuating old and new inequality fault lines in contemporary South Africa. It uses the tragic Marikana story as a case study to examine the relationship between inequality and financialisation of the economy. In particular I ask what has financialisation of the South African economy meant for the mineworkers of Marikana? Financialisation of the economy and its social relations is extending the reach of finance and financial interests into hitherto virgin territory, thereby reinforcing old inequalities while at the same time introducing new ones. The consequences press the working classes to the wall and complicate the power arrangements within and among the unions. At the heart of the matter is the character of the Minerals Energy Complex (at the centre of South Africa’s social and economic affairs) and its needs. I contend that the MEC is fundamental to the understanding of inequality in South Africa. Marikana itself, points to new and novel sources of inequality reinforcing the old. |
| Keywords: | Finance, Financialisation, Labour |
| JEL: | G1 J5 P26 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1305&r=hme |
| By: | Jhonatan A. Clausen Lizárraga (Departamento de Economía - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú); José Luis Flor Toro (Departamento de Economía - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) |
| Abstract: | Esta investigación tiene como primer objetivo realizar un análisis crítico de la literatura que ha buscado implementar mediciones de pobreza multidimensional en el Perú. A partir de este ejercicio, rigurosamente sustentado en el enfoque de las capacidades, se identifican dos principales grupos de críticas. El primer grupo se relaciona a la justificación de la elección de las dimensiones de la pobreza y los indicadores que las reflejan. Así, se cuestiona la elección de ciertas dimensiones (y la exclusión de otras) y de ciertos indicadores para ellas que reflejan entitlements antes que functionings. El segundo grupo de críticas se relaciona a la metodología de agregación de dichos indicadores así como a otras críticas acerca implementación empírica y cuestiones instrumentales, en particular, la importancia y utilidad del uso de una medida única multidimensional en lugar de un abanico de indicadores uni-dimensionales, y la sensibilidad a la elección de ponderaciones de las medidas. Tomando en cuenta estas dificultades, se propone en tercer lugar llevar a cabo una nueva propuesta de medición de la pobreza multidimensional en el Perú que reconozca de forma explícita dichas deficiencias a fin intentar superarlas. El resultado es una medida de pobreza humana multidimensional que parte de la metodología empírica de Alkire y Foster (2010) y que a su vez se vale fuertemente del enfoque de las capacidades a nivel conceptual para realizar extensiones de acuerdo a la realidad propia del Perú. JEL Classification-JEL: |
| Keywords: | pobreza multidimensional, capacidades esenciales, medición de pobreza, Peru |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pcp:pucwps:wp00387&r=hme |
| By: | Fedorets, Alexandra |
| Abstract: | In the present paper I provide novel evidence on the formation of the gender pay gap with respect to directly measured job task contents. Using high-quality administrative employment data for Germany, and augmenting these by individual-level task information, I provide detailed evidence on the evolution of task contents and their gender-specific remuneration across and within occupations for both genders. The main finding of the paper is that the formation of the pay gap is substantially driven by the relative prices for non-routine cognitive tasks. Moreover, I document convergence in prices for non-routine cognitive tasks and convergence of tasks contents within occupational groups. The only exception from this general finding constitutes the top of the wage distribution, where the substantial difference in prices for non-routine cognitive tasks is persistent and the pay gap is not narrowing. |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J16 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc14:100362&r=hme |
| By: | Markus P. A. Schneider (Economics Department, University of Denver) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the evolution of the earnings distribution from 1995 to 2010 of four major de- mographic groups are considered separately, which shows that there are important differences in the experience of inequality that imply that race and gender are not separable when it comes to understand- ing the distribution of earnings in the US. The main findings are that only white men have experienced changes in within-group inequality that parallel the changes in inequality seen in the overall distribution. By contrast, the black population (male and female) has seen no notable increase in within-group in- equality. The evolution of earnings inequality is also compared to the increase in inequality documented by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, and it is shown that earnings inequality has followed a qualita- tively similar, though less extreme trend to total pre-tax income inequality. In the process, the apparent disconnect between the Gini coefficient - which has not changes much - and inequality assessed via the share of income going to the top percent of income earners is clarified. |
| Keywords: | Dagum Distribution, Earnings Inequality, Gini Coefficient, Income Distribution |
| JEL: | D31 D63 C46 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1303&r=hme |
| By: | André Gambier Campos |
| Abstract: | O fenômeno da desigualdade é próprio das relações que vertebram a sociedade de classes e a economia capitalista. Trabalhadores e empresários, sujeitos dessas relações,encontram-se em uma posição de desigualdade que deriva do seguinte fato: por um lado, empresários são sujeitos coletivos, pois suas decisões influenciam a sociedade como um conjunto. Por outro, trabalhadores são sujeitos individuais, com todas as fragilidades e dificuldades inerentes a essa condição, pois suas opções não conseguem afetar quase nada além de sua própria comunidade. Ainda que não seja possível imaginar a superação dessa desigualdade, é possível pensar em sua mitigação, por meio de uma regulação pública do trabalho. Instituidora de direitos e deveres, balizadores das relações entre trabalhadores e empresários no mercado laboral, tal regulação procura atenuar a desigualdade estrutural verificada entre ambos os sujeitos. Este Texto para discussão procura recuperar os traços básicos da evolução da regulação pública do trabalho no Brasil, no largo espectro histórico que vai dos anos 1930 aos 2000. The phenomenon of inequality is typical of relations that structure class society and capitalism. Workers and entrepreneurs, subjects of those relations, are in a position of inequality, which derives from the following facts: on the one hand, entrepreneurs are collective subjects, because their decisions affect society as a whole. Furthermore,workers are individual subjects, with all the weaknesses and difficulties of this condition, because their choices don’t affect almost anything beyond their own community.Although it is not possible to overcome this inequality, it is possible to think about its mitigation, through public regulation of labor relations. Founder of rights and duties in the labor market, such regulation seeks to mitigate the structural inequality observed between both subjects. This discussion paper seeks to recover the basic features of the evolution of labor regulation in Brazil, in the broad historical spectrum ranging from the 1930s to 2000s. |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipe:ipetds:2024&r=hme |
| By: | Lacan, Laure; Lazarus, Jeanne |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to describe the social studies of credit developed in France over the past dozen years. We argue that this French sociology of credit, mostly centered on France, can be useful for researchers analyzing other countries, with other institutional particularities, because it proposes a specific method and a specific way to raise questions: credit is mostly understood as a result of social interactions embedded in organizational and legal structures. French researchers also deeply analyze the consequences of the organization of the credit market for inequalities, social stratification, and people's life experiences. The first part of the paper focuses on works that have examined credit as a social test, looking at the institutional, technical, and social frameworks of money lending. Then, credit is understood as a sociological experiment: how is it integrated into household economies? How do people use forms of credit? Finally, the third part concentrates on credit failure, when a bank loan becomes a debt. This aspect is mostly framed in French sociology as "over-indebtedness", which is an administrative and a social category. Throughout the paper, we address credit as both a relationship and a practice. This approach is heuristic, as we seek to demonstrate, because it enables us to show that credit is a social and political issue. |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:maxpod:151&r=hme |
| By: | Noelle, Susanne |
| Abstract: | Wie können Genossenschaften ihren MemberValue erhöhen? Ein Weg sind Unternehmenskooperationen. Das vorliegende Arbeitspapier untersucht, in welchen Bereichen Wohnungsgenossenschaften und Genossenschaftsbanken miteinander kooperieren können. Dabei werden zum einen Bereiche identifiziert, in denen sie die Kompetenzen des jeweils anderen nutzen können. Zum anderen werden Bereiche identifiziert, die dazu dienen können, Genossenschaften allgemein und die Region, in der die Genossenschaften ansässig sind, zu stärken. Das Papier schließt mit einem Ausblick auf mögliche weitere Forschungsfelder zur konkreten Umsetzung der Kooperationen, um die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse praktisch anwendbar zu machen. |
| Abstract: | How can cooperatives increase their MemberValue? One option is the formation of a business cooperation. This working paper identifies areas in which housing cooperatives can cooperate with cooperative banks. The first set of areas aims at profiting by the competences of each other. The second set of areas helps strengthen cooperatives in general as well as the region in which the cooperating cooperatives are located. At the end, the outlook proposes research that will enable practitioners to use the theoretical insights for management purposes. |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wwuifg:149&r=hme |
| By: | Fontana, Magda; Terna, Pietro (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | An important perspective use of Agent-based models (ABMs) is that of being employed as tools to support decision systems in policy-making, in the complex systems framework. Such models can be usefully employed at two different levels: to help in deciding (policy-maker level) and to empower the capabilities of people in evaluating the effectiveness of policies (citizen level). Consequently, the class of ABMs for policymaking needs to be both quite simple in its structure and highly sophisticated in its outcomes. The pursuing of simplicity and sophistication can be made more effective by applying network analysis to the emergent results. Actually, in today’s world the consequences of choices and decisions and their effects on society, and on its organization, are equally relevant. Considering the agent-based and network techniques together, we have a further important possibility. Since it is easier to have network data (i.e. social network data) than detailed behavioral individual information, we can try to understand the relationships between the dynamic changes of the networks emerging from agent-based models and the behavior of the agents. As we understand these connections, we can apply them to actual networks, to try to understand what the behavioral black boxes of real-world agents contain. We propose a simple basic structure where events, scheduled upon time, call upon agents to behave, to modify their context, and to create new structures of links among them. Events are organized as collections of small acts and steps. The metaphor is that of a recipe, i.e. a set of directions with a list of ingredients for making or preparing something, especially food (as defined in the American Heritage dictionary). Technically, recipes are sequences of numerical or alphanumerical codes, reported in vectors, and move from an agent to another determining the events and generating the edges of the emerging networks. A basic code will be shown, useful to manage possible applications in different fields: production, health-care scenarios, paper co-authorship, opinion spreading, etc. |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:dipeco:201507&r=hme |
| By: | Klein, Florian |
| Abstract: | Die MemberValue-Orientierung von Genossenschaftsbanken impliziertdie Schaffung umfassender Nachhaltigkeitsleistungen. Welche Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren dabei potenziell Anwendung finden, wird in diesem Arbeitspapier ermittelt. Dafür wird eine systematische Literaturstudiedurchgeführt. In deren Rahmen werden 51 Quellen mit insgesamt 209 potenziell relevanten Nachhaltigkeitsindikatoren identifiziert, welche in sieben Themenfelder kategorisiert werden. Diese sieben Themenfelder können den drei Dimensionen des Leitbildes der Nachhaltigkeit zugeordnet werden. |
| Abstract: | The Member Value-orientation of Cooperative Banks implicates the creation of a comprehensive sustainability performance. This working paper analyses, which sustainability indicators potentially find application in Cooperative Banks. For this purpose, a systematic literature study isconducted. Based on 51 sources, 209 potentially relevant sustainability indicators can be identified and are sorted into seven categories. These seven categories are assigned to the three dimensions of the sustainability concept. |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wwuifg:148&r=hme |
| By: | Miriam Rehm (Chamber of Labour, Austria); Ali Asjad Naqvi (Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP)) |
| Keywords: | migration, agent-based modeling, networks |
| JEL: | C63 F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1307&r=hme |
| By: | Thomas Dietz (University of Muenster - Institute of Political Science & ZenTra); Marius Dotzauer (University of Muenster - Institute of Political Science) |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to explore the political dimensions of investment arbitration. What drives the structures and rules of this institution of private-transnational dispute settlement? To define political dimensions and develop the basis of a political explanation of investment arbitration, we reconstruct the conflict about investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). We argue that the competing interests of different actors shape the design of the institution. Investment arbitration has become politicized. On a horizontal dimension, interest groups argue about the risks and benefits of arbitration. On a vertical dimension, government authorities struggle to balance national sovereignty and global interests. We indicate a political process, defined by the configuration of the horizontal and the vertical dimension, which drives the emergence and development of investment arbitration. |
| Keywords: | Arbitration, investor-state dispute settlement, TTIP, politicization, distributional conflicts |
| JEL: | F13 F15 F21 K33 P16 |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zen:wpaper:48&r=hme |
| By: | Oriana Bandiera; Robin Burgess; Selim Gulesci; Imran Rasul; Munshi Sulaiman |
| Abstract: | Women in developing countries are disempowered relative to their contemporaries in developed countries. High youth unemployment and early marriage and childbearing interact to limit human capital investment and enforce dependence on men. In this paper we evaluate an attempt to jump-start adolescent women's empowerment in the world's second youngest country: Uganda. In this two-pronged intervention, adolescent girls are simultaneously provided vocational training and information on sex, reproduction and marriage. Relative to adolescents in control communities, after two years the intervention raises the likelihood that girls engage in income generating activities by 72% (mainly driven by increased participation in self-employment), and raises their monthly consumption expenditures by 41%. Teen pregnancy falls by 26%, and early entry into marriage/cohabitation falls by 58%. Strikingly, the share of girls reporting sex against their will drops by 14% to almost half that level and preferred ages of marriage and childbearing both move forward. The findings indicate that women's economic and social empowerment can be jump-started through the combined provision of vocational and life skills, and is not necessarily held back by insurmountable constraints arising from binding social norms. |
| JEL: | I25 J13 J24 O12 |
| Date: | 2014–10–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oxf:wpaper:wps/2014-30&r=hme |
| By: | José Ignacio Conde-Ruiz; Carmen Hoya |
| Abstract: | This policy paper presents an analysis of the current situation of female representation on the boards of Directors of the 35 largest publicly listed Spanish companies. Whenever possible, it compares the situation in 2013 to that of 2007, the year in which the “Gender Equality Act” was passed. The law stated that in 2015 it would assess progress and decide whether or not to introduce more drastic measures or implement further actions if necessary. The paper finds there is still a long way to go until gender equality is reached. Female representation on the boards is still below the EU-28 average and more importantly well below the 40% objective the Spanish Government set in 2007 to be met in 2015. Moreover, even though female board members are paid on average less than male board members (even when comparing in the same job position and the same company), they are younger and more educated than their male colleagues. An analysis of the Spanish situation and of the EU context suggests that the only way forward is through binding legislation (i.e. gender quotas with sanctions for non-complying companies). |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fda:fdapop:2015-03&r=hme |