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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2016‒05‒08
ten papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Kazuhiro Kurose (Tohoku University); Naoki Yoshihara (Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the validity of the factor price equalisation theorem (FPET) in relation to capital theory. Additionally, it presents a survey of the literature on Heckscher–-Ohlin-–Samuelson (HOS) models that treat capital as a primary factor, beginning with Samuelson (1953). Furthermore, this paper discusses the Cambridge capital controversy, which contends that marginal productivity theory does not hold when capital is assumed to be as a bundle of reproducible commodities instead of as a primary factor. Consequently, it is shown that under this assumption, the FPET does not hold, even when there is no reversal of capital intensity. This paper also demonstrates that the recent studies on the dynamic HOS trade theory generally ignore the difficulties posed by the capital controversies and are thereby able to conclude that the FPET holds even when capital is modelled as a reproducible factor. Our analysis suggests that there is a need for a basic theory of international trade that does not rely on factor price equalisation and a model that formulates capital as a bundle of reproducible commodities. |
| Keywords: | factor price equalisation, capital as the bundle of reproducible commodities, reswitching of techniques, capital reversing |
| JEL: | B51 D33 F11 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kch:wpaper:sdes-2016-4&r=hme |
| By: | Mariana Mazzucato (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex); Caetano C.R. Penna (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex) |
| Abstract: | Recent work has highlighted the need for innovation investments to be understood through a mission oriented approach rather than a market failure one (Foray et al. 2012). However, this work has only focused on state agencies, such as DARPA, overlooking the role of public financial institutions such as state investment banks. Indeed, with the increasingly short-term nature of private financial markets, the role of public financial institutions has become increasingly important, and yet they continue to be analysed and evaluated through the market failure framework. Beginning with the importance of SIBs today in the emerging green economy, the paper develops a conceptual typology of the different roles that SIBs play in the economy which together show the market creation/shaping process of SIBs, rather than their mere ‘market fixing’ roles. The paper discusses four types of investments, both theoretically and empirically: countercyclical; developmental; venture capitalist role; and challenge-led. To develop the typology, we first discuss how standard market failure theory (MFT) justifies the roles of SIBs, the diagnostics and evaluation toolbox associated with it, and resulting criticisms centred on notions of ‘government failures’. We then show the limitations of this approach based on insights from Keynes, Schumpeter, Minsky and Polanyi, and other authors from the evolutionary economics tradition, which help us move towards a framework for public investments that is more about market creating/shaping rather than market fixing. As frameworks lead to evaluation tools, we use this new lens to both discuss the increasingly targeted investments that SIBs are making, and to provide a new light on the usual criticisms that are made about such directed activity (e.g. crowding out and picking winners). |
| JEL: | G20 O16 O38 L52 P16 |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:thk:wpaper:7&r=hme |
| By: | Lambrecht, Isabel |
| Abstract: | Improving women’s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non-governmental agencies. Yet, the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood. This paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households. It explains the importance of social norms, perceptions, and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels: (1) the household/family, (2) the community, (3) the state, and (4) the market. The framework is applied to Ghana. Norms on household and family organization and on men’s and women’s responsibilities and capabilities play a key role in gendered allocation of resources. However, these norms and perceptions are dynamic and evolve jointly with the development of markets and changes in values of inputs such as labor and land. Theoretical models that represent the gendered distribution of assets as the result of intrahousehold bargaining should be revised, and extrahousehold factors should be included. From a policy perspective, laws that ensure gender equality in terms of inheritance and a more gender-equitable distribution of property upon divorce can play a key role in improving women’s property rights. Yet, their impact may be limited where customary rights dominate and social norms and rules continue to discriminate according to gender. |
| Keywords: | gender, women, land rights, households, customary land rights, customary law, marriage, social norms, household model, female farmers, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1514&r=hme |
| By: | Sneyers, Astrid; Vandeplas, Anneleen |
| Abstract: | In agriculture, women have been found to be less productive than men for a variety of reasons. Most of the studies in this domain focus on crop production, and so far there has been little evidence on the impact of gender on productivity in dairy. This paper provides empirical evidence of the impact of female decision-making power on dairy productivity in India, based on a unique household-level dataset collected in 2010 in 50 villages in Andhra Pradesh, a state in the South of India. Our analysis suggests that higher productivity is achieved in households where women take dairy production-related decisions. While caution is due in drawing overly strong conclusions, our results provide a more nuanced view on the impact of gender on agricultural productivity than the one usually put forward in the literature. |
| Keywords: | agricultural productivity, dairy sector, gender, female decision-making power, Agribusiness, Livestock Production/Industries, Q18, O13, |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae15:212062&r=hme |
| By: | Luis Miguel Rodrigo (Departamento de Economia, Universidad Catolica del Norte) |
| Abstract: | Este trabajo estudia la estructuración de la subjetividad política en la región de Antofagasta, situada en el norte de Chile, en un contexto socioeconómico prototípicamente neoliberal. A partir de una muestra de treinta relatos de vida sometidos a un análisis sociológico del discurso, se construye un conjunto de tipologías que son denominadas habitus políticos. En el análisis, se identifican cuatro experiencias vitales fundamentales en la estructuración de estos habitus políticos: el posicionamiento familiar en el conflicto histórico (golpe de Estado y dictadura miliar), la clase social, la trayectoria social y la trayectoria espacial. Se concluye que la relación con el orden social es prediscursiva, por lo que resulta necesario sumar el análisis biográfico de las disposiciones políticas (estructuras individuales de subjetividad política) al análisis de los discursos políticos (estructuras sociales de subjetividad política). |
| Keywords: | Bourdieu; sociología política; neoliberalismo; análisis sociológico del discurso; relatos de vida |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cat:dtecon:dt201602&r=hme |
| By: | KATO Takao; KODAMA Naomi |
| Abstract: | Using panel data on corporate social responsibility (CSR) matched with corporate proxy statement data for a large and representative sample of 1,492 publicly-traded firms in Japan over 2006-2014, we provide rigorous econometric evidence on the effects of CSR on gender diversity in the workplace. Our fixed effect estimates point to positive and significant effects on gender diversity of CSR, yet the effects are felt only after two to three years. Such CSR effects are found to be larger and more significant for firms that adhere more closely to the traditional Japanese management model with employee stakeholder salience, which is mostly consistent with an influential theory of CSR--the theory of stakeholder salience. The magnitude of the effects is neither trivial nor implausibly large. For those firms that adhere closely to the participatory model, one standard deviation increase in our summary CSR score, after three years, will result in 0.8 more female college graduate hires from its mean of 17.5; 1.7 more female managers from its mean of 26.2; and 0.16 more female directors from its mean of 1.69. Finally, the positive and significant CSR effects on gender diversity are found to be robust to the inclusion of controls capturing the possible effects of various work-life balance (WLB) practices on gender diversity, pointing to the direct impact of CSR on gender diversity rather than the CSR effects mediated by WLB. In designing and revising various public policies to achieve their current key policy goal of advancement of women in the labor market, Japanese policy makers may want to pay more attention to a potentially important role that CSR plays in gender diversity in the workplace in general and the heterogeneity of the CSR effects and their considerable gestation period in particular. |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:16063&r=hme |
| By: | HONDA Yuki |
| Abstract: | In order to find a way out from the situation facing the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s political slogan "Empowerment of Woman," which appears to be not progressing remarkably, it is indispensable to grasp the actuality, diversity, causes, and influences of Japanese women's attitudes toward gender role and work. This paper tries to examine the distribution of attitude types among married women, factors of the differentiation of types, and influences of attitude types on their children, using the "Empowerment of Women" questionnaire survey data conducted in 2014. The main findings are: first, in the 2014 data, the attitude type characterized by the conservative gender role attitude and the negative attitude toward work accounts for one-third of married women and is the highest. The percentage of this attitude type is larger than in a past survey data conducted in 1995. Second, the factors related to the differentiation of attitudes types include self-evaluation of job skills, the way of spending spare time, and the importance attached to the family life. Third, attitude types have a different influence on their children according to the gender composition of the children. |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:rdpsjp:16042&r=hme |
| By: | Acklie, Paige; Popp, Jennie |
| Abstract: | The US Agricultural Census show that between 2002 and 2012, the number of women operators in Arkansas grew 14 percent (from 19,856 to 22,637). These women operators have made up an increasingly larger percent of all farm operators in the state (from almost 29% to nearly 33%). There is little published information regarding how women’s roles, challenges and factors important to their success may have changed over time. While some surveys of farm women have been conducted, these surveys are generally insufficient because data exist only for one point in time. This poster uses survey data collected across ten years (2005-2014) at Arkansas Women in Agriculture (ARWIA) conferences to compare women’s perceptions regarding: 1) their roles in agriculture, 2) the successes and challenges they face, 3) how their roles have changed over time, and 4) how that change has influenced their family lives, agriculture and the rural community. It is hoped that this set of baseline information can be useful not only to researchers and educators interested in addressing needs of local women but also in illustrating the continuing changes in women’s roles and their needs and thus the need for extended research over time to address these changes. |
| Keywords: | women in agriculture, farm labor, leadership, Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Q10 J01, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:saea16:229975&r=hme |
| By: | Ugo Mattei (UC Hastings, University of Turin & IUC Turin); Alessandra Quarta (University of Turin & IUC Turin) |
| Abstract: | The economic and political transformations determined by the rise of neoliberalism are usually studied at a state dimension, while the urban one is quite ignored. Nevertheless, the government of the city has been influenced by global and national recent changes and all the municipal sectors have been touched by the austerity's recipe. The decrease of urban public spaces, their privatizations as well as gentrification transform city planning that is often unable to elaborate alternative solutions against the overexploitation of the urban territory and the increase of inequalities caused by economic crisis. In a city, after all, it is impossible to hide inequalities and injustices. In the last years, cities have often been the theater of political struggles against the privatization of public spaces, evictions and the dissolution of the urban welfare. In many cases, the demonstrators have occupied parks or abandoned buildings (theatre, condominiums...), and used them to find a temporary solution to their different needs (housing, social space, new forms of work, urban gardens...). They denounce the great number of public or private empty spaces (for instance, the abandoned infrastructures left by the process of de-industrialization) and their neglect. According to the right to the city they claim, the inhabitants have to produce urban spaces starting from their own needs: empty spaces become an opportunity, the urban care is a collective task. This approach shares the logic of the commons, which reclaims a new paradigm based on inclusion, participation and social and ecological use of resources: according to many scholars, also urban spaces are commons. After a description of this wide context, the article explores the connection between commons and the right to the city. |
| Keywords: | urban commons, right to the city, privatization, grassroots action, neoliberalism |
| JEL: | B59 K11 O18 P48 |
| Date: | 2015–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iuc:rpaper:2-15&r=hme |
| By: | Alberto Paloni; John Ebireri |
| Abstract: | According to mainstream economic theory, development of the banking sector is essential to fund innovation and technological development, especially in developing countries. In turn, this is expected to cause a shift in comparative advantage towards more sophisticated export goods. Moreover, as financial development relaxes firms’ liquidity constraints, the expectation is that this would result in a greater capacity to export and hence diversification in the export basket. Alternative economic theories are more critical. On the basis of a different conceptualisation of technological advancement which emphasises the centrality of learning and the tacit character of technology, they conclude that financial liberalisation policies would not make more finance available for innovative activities. To the contrary, the main beneficiaries of such policies would be firms employing simpler technologies and making low value added products. Thus, financial development is more likely to prevent an improvement in the degree of sophistication of a country’s export basket. Moreover, as finance is directed towards activities in which the country is already competitive, diversification of the export basket is also hindered. Our empirical analysis provides support for these heterodox theories. Recent empirical work by mainstream researchers also finds that banking sector development forces countries to specialise in accordance with their existing comparative advantage. However, mainstream and heterodox economic theories reach opposite conclusion on whether this is a beneficial process. |
| Keywords: | bank development, export sophistication, export concentration, technological progress, developing countries |
| JEL: | B5 O1 O3 |
| Date: | 2016–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gla:glaewp:2016_10&r=hme |