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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2017‒02‒19
twenty-one papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Onaran, Özlem; Guschanski, Alexander |
| Abstract: | Austria has experienced one of the steepest declines in the wage share in comparison to other European countries with a fall from 66.2% in its peak in 1978 to 52.8% in 2007 before the recession, and as of 2015 with a level of 55.5% it is 10.6%-point below its peak. We find that union density has had the strongest impact in Austria, explaining 85.1 percent of the average decline of the wage share (based on our estimations for the period of during 1996-2007). We also find a sizeable negative effect of intermediate imports (international outsourcing) and some negative effect of outward FDI as well as financialisation measured by household debt and financial payments (interest and dividend payments and income as a ratio to total resources of nonfinancial corporations). The negative impact of technology (measured by ICT capital intensity as a ratio to value added in the sector) is relatively smaller and not always significant. Results indicate that migration has had a very strong positive effect on the wage share. Increasing imports of capital and consumption goods have also had sizeable positive effects. The strategy of an equality-led development requires labour market policies aiming at pre-distribution as well as redistribution. These include strengthening the bargaining power of labour, ensuring higher collective bargaining coverage, enforcing gender equality, introducing and enforcing pay ratios to moderate wage inequality, and restoring the progressivity of the tax system. |
| Keywords: | Austria; wage share; income distribution; labour unions; bargaining |
| Date: | 2016–10–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gpe:wpaper:15865&r=hme |
| By: | Rotta, Tomas |
| Abstract: | In this paper I theorize the roles of effective demand and Say’s law in the Marxist theory of exploitation and accumulation. I claim that an exogenous rate of exploitation, or an exogenous functional distribution of income between profits and wages, implies deploying Say’s law, which leads profit rates not to equalize across sectors. Marx’s own procedure in Capital III of simultaneously supposing an exogenous rate of exploitation and profit rate equalization was therefore logically inconsistent. Once Keynes’ principle of effective demand is introduced, the rate of exploitation and hence the distribution of income between wages and profits become endogenous to aggregate demand. Profit rates then do equalize across sectors and prices of production can function as gravitational centers for market prices in a competitive economy. If we aim at developing a theory that is both empirically relevant and logically consistent, Marxist scholars must therefore drop Say’s law and incorporate Keynes’ principle of effective demand for a proper understanding of how capital accumulation determines the rate of exploitation, the functional distribution of income, and the equalization of profit rates. |
| Keywords: | Marxist accumulation theory; exploitation; income distribution; Keynes’ effective demand; Say’s law; evolutionary game theory; |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gpe:wpaper:15511&r=hme |
| By: | Roberto Veneziani (Queen Mary University of London); Naoki Yoshihara (University of Massachusetts Amherst) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the normative and positive foundations of the theory of exploitation as the unequal exchange of labour (UEL). The key intuitions behind all of the main approaches to UEL exploitation are explicitly analysed as a series of formal claims in a general economic environment. It is then argued that these intuitions can be captured by one fundamental axiom - called Labour Exploitation - which defines the basic domain of all UEL exploitation forms and identifies the formal and theoretical framework for the analysis of the appropriate definition of exploitation. |
| Keywords: | Exploitation, Unequal Exchange of Labour, axiomatic analysis |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2017-04&r=hme |
| By: | Heather C. Vough; Uta K. Bindl; Sharon K. Parker |
| Abstract: | Proactive work behaviors are self-initiated, future-focused actions aimed at bringing about changes to work processes in organizations. Such behaviors occur within the social context of work. The extant literature that has focused on the role of social context for proactivity has focused on social context as an overall input or output of proactivity. However, in this paper we argue that the process of engaging in proactive work behavior (proactive goal striving) may also be a function of the social context it occurs in. Based on qualitative data from 39 call center employees in an energy-supply company, we find that in a context characterized by standardized work procedures, proactive goal striving can occur through a proactivity routine- a socially constructed and accepted pattern of action by which employees initiate and achieve changes to work processes, with the support of managers and colleagues. Our findings point to the need to view proactive work behaviors at a higher level of analysis than the individual in order to identify shared routines for engaging in proactivity, as well as how multiple actors coordinate their efforts in the process of achieving individually-generated proactive goals. |
| Keywords: | Proactive work behaviors are self-initiated; future-focused actions aimed at bringing about changes to work processes in organizations. Such behaviors occur within the social context of work. The extant literature that has focused on the role of social context for proactivity has focused on social context as an overall input or output of proactivity. However; in this paper we argue that the process of engaging in proactive work behavior (proactive goal striving) may also be a function of the social context it occurs in. Based on qualitative data from 39 call center employees in an energy-supply company; we find that in a context characterized by standardized work procedures; proactive goal striving can occur through a proactivity routine- a socially constructed and accepted pattern of action by which employees initiate and achieve changes to work processes; with the support of managers and colleagues. Our findings point to the need to view proactive work behaviors at a higher level of analysis than the individual in order to identify shared routines for engaging in proactivity; as well as how multiple actors coordinate their efforts in the process of achieving individually-generated proactive goals. |
| JEL: | R14 J01 J50 |
| Date: | 2017–01–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:68584&r=hme |
| By: | Duncan Foley (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research) |
| Abstract: | The financial crisis of 2007-8 damaged the credibility of macroeconomic analysis based on price-taking Walrasian intertemporal general equilibrium models. This talk explores methodological alternatives, particularly stable Nash-Cournot equilibria of social interaction models that center on agents’ response to other agents’ actions rather than on agents’ forecasts of future paths of prices and production. Social interaction equilibria in conjunction with constraints from information theory highlight the social coordination problems at the root of macroeconomic policy questions. Equilibrium concepts enhance the explanatory power of economic theories in contrast with the limitations of disequilibrium dynamical systems analysis and agent-based modeling. Constrained maximum entropy methods offer a general approach to macroeconomic modeling. Various conceptions of equilibrium in economics arise from distinct conceptions of expectations. |
| Keywords: | Economic equilibrium, statistical equilibrium, Nash-Cournot equilibrium, expectations, maximum entropy |
| JEL: | B22 B40 C62 C72 D50 E12 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1703&r=hme |
| By: | Duncan Foley (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research) |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1705&r=hme |
| By: | Rao, Nitya; Pradhan, Mamata; Roy, Devesh |
| Abstract: | There is ample evidence to suggest a strong correlation between gender inequality and food and nutrition insecurity, yet the policy discourse around food and nutrition security in India has largely been gender-blind. This paper, based on a review of existing literature and emerging research, emphasizes the need to place gender justice at the center of all food and nutrition interventions, if food and nutrition security for all is to be achieved. Rather than exclusively targeting women and often overburdening them with the responsibility for household food security, policy approaches need to encourage and enhance reciprocity and sharing between men and women in households and communities, and empower them to negotiate effectively vis-Ã -vis institutions of the state, markets, and society. With the aim of moving toward gender-transformative approaches in policies and programs for achieving food and nutrition security in India, in this paper we set out an alternate framing of the agenda, drawing on what the evidence tells us. We flag emerging issues that need to be addressed to draw out possible implications for research and policy in gender-just food and nutrition interventions in India. |
| Keywords: | gender, women, food security, nutrition security, |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1600&r=hme |
| By: | Sarah Cook; Prerna Banati; Elena Camilletti; UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti |
| Abstract: | A first roundtable to explore the issues regarding care work and children was hosted in Florence by the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti from 6 to 7 December 2016. Unpaid care and domestic work have often been neglected in both research and policymaking, being viewed as lying within the domestic sphere of decisions and responsibilities, rather than as a public issue. However, over recent decades, researchers across a range of disciplines have strived to fill the evidence, data and research gaps by exploring the unpaid care and domestic work provided particularly by women within the household, and uncovering the entrenched social and gender norms and inequalities. |
| Keywords: | care of disabled children; care of the aged; domestic workers; labour migration; public policy; |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucf:inores:inores884&r=hme |
| By: | Nigel Dodd |
| Abstract: | This paper challenges the notion that Bitcoin is ‘trust-free’ money by highlighting the social practices, organizational structures and utopian ambitions that sustain it. At the paper’s heart is the paradox that if Bitcoin succeeds in its own terms as an ideology, it will fail in practical terms as a form of money. The main reason for this is that the new currency is premised on the idea of money as a ‘thing’ that must be abstracted from social life in order for to be protected from manipulation by bank intermediaries and political authorities. The image is of a fully mechanized currency that operates over and above social life. In practice, however, the currency has generated a thriving community around its political ideals, relies on a high degree of social organization in order to be produced, has a discernible social structure, and is characterized by asymmetries of wealth and power that not dissimilar from the mainstream financial system. Unwittingly, then, Bitcoin serves as a powerful demonstration of the relational character of money. |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:69229&r=hme |
| By: | Seymour, Gregory; Floro, Maria S. |
| Abstract: | Despite increases in women’s employment, significant gender disparity exists in the time men and women spend on household and care work. Understanding how social expectations govern gender roles and contribute to this disparity is essential for designing policies that effectively promote a more equitable household division of labor. In this study, we examine how a woman’s identity may affect the trade-offs between the time she spends on household and care work and her well-being, using an analytical framework we develop based on the work of Akerlof and Kranton. Analyzing data from rural Bangladesh, we find that longer hours spent on household work are associated with lower levels of subjective well-being among women who disagree with patriarchal notions of gender roles, while the opposite is true for women who agree with patriarchal notions of gender roles. Importantly, this pattern holds only when a woman strongly identifies with patriarchal or egalitarian notions of gender role. |
| Keywords: | gender, women, time study, households, gender analysis, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1580&r=hme |
| By: | Lamia Kandil (OFCE-Sciences PO); Hélène Perivier (OFCE-Sciences PO) |
| Abstract: | L’objet de cet article est d’analyser le partage des tâches domestiques dans les couples selon leur statut marital, et son évolution depuis les années 1980 à partir de trois enquêtes emploi du temps de l’Insee (1985-86, 1998-99 et 2009-10). La méthode des MCO est complétée par la méthode d’appariement qui permet de tenir compte de l’auto-sélection des couples au regard de leurs caractéristiques observables dans les différentes formes d’union (mariage, union libre et pacs pour l’année 2009-10). En 1985-86 ainsi qu’en 1998-99, le degré de division sexuée du travail était plus important dans les couples mariés que dans les couples vivant en union libre. Pour l’année 1985-86, cet écart s’explique par les différences de caractéristiques des couples vivant en union libre. En revanche, à la fin des années 1990, les couples en union libre optaient pour une organisation moins inégalitaire que celle des couples mariés toutes choses égales par ailleurs. Pour l’année 2009-10, en moyenne la part de travail domestique réalisée par les femmes est sensiblement la même qu’elles vivent en union libre ou qu’elles soient mariées (respectivement 72% et 73,5%), mais elle est significativement plus faible pour les femmes pacsées (65,1%). Ces écarts ne sont pas dus aux différences de caractéristiques observables des couples selon le type d’union. L’article montre qu’une auto-sélection des couples qui s’opèrerait sur les valeurs expliquerait cet écart : en 2009-10, le pacs attirerait les couples les plus « égalitaires », qui, avant l’introduction de l’union civile, optaient pour l’union libre. |
| Keywords: | Division sexuée du travail, statut martial, économie de la famille, enquête emploi du temps, méthode d'appariement |
| JEL: | J12 J22 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fce:doctra:1703&r=hme |
| By: | Senzu, Emmanuel Tweneboah |
| Abstract: | There is quantum empirical evidence and numerous literature that correlate women empowerment to macroeconomic growth, which further make a strong correlation of empowerment of women to feminism agenda. This has led to the rise of gender democracy and feminism in the past two decades up to date. However this development of women with high educational status driven under feminism is failing to correlate to any meaningful macroeconomic growth in Africa as proposed, which this paper phenomenological seeks to prove the lack of correlation between feminism and women empowerment, hence leading to low or no effect in macroeconomic growth in Africa economic ecosystem |
| Keywords: | women empowerment, feminism, macroeconomic development, Africa economic ecosystem |
| JEL: | E22 E26 O1 O11 P0 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:76767&r=hme |
| By: | Lisa Tilley |
| Abstract: | This thesis elaborates a decolonial international political economy (IPE) as a means of examining the condition of market emergence in Indonesia. It presents the term ‘emerging market’ as the contemporary organising grammar which positions Indonesia in relation to international capital flows. This condition of market emergence is further understood in historical colonial perspective as the latest mode of producing Indonesia as an investible site for international capital. My expansion of decolonial IPE is made in this thesis through the analysis of difference-based ‘exclusion’ and ‘translation’, both as vital elements of coloniality and as processes which relate to accumulation and dispossession in an ‘emerging market’ context. I go on to make the case for bringing urban and rural terminable sites of extraction into the same frame of analysis. These are understood similarly here as internal frontiers along which social groups are materially and discursively excluded from the national emerging market project and thus rendered expropriatable. I further analyse the repeated dispossession of these expropriatable groups along with other means of enacting ‘translations’, or enforced alterations in ways of being. These translations are by no means passively accepted and my analysis further demonstrates various means by which these are negotiated and contested. This thesis therefore makes contributions to the literature on decolonial thought and IPE, at the same time as presenting an original examination of Indonesia in its present moment of market emergence. |
| Keywords: | Political economy; IPE; Indonesia; Decolonial thought; urban; rural; extractives |
| Date: | 2017–01–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/238574&r=hme |
| By: | Tortia, Ermanno C. |
| Abstract: | Contemporary literature dealing with the governance of the exploitation of common-pool natural resources was initiated by Elinor Ostrom in 1990, and has been growing fast ever since. On the contrary, within the same research stream, the study of the presence and economic role of common resources in entrepreneurial-organizational is, to date, under-researched. This work endeavours some attempt to fill this gap by: first, spelling out a new-institutionalist framework for the analysis of the accumulation and governance of common capital resources within organizational boundaries; second, by considering co-operative enterprises as the organizational form that, on the basis of historical record, and of behavioural and institutional characteristics, demonstrated to be the most compatible with a substantial role for common and non-divided asset-ownership and with its governance thereof. The economic forces influencing the optimal level of self-financed common capital resources in co-operatives are enquired. Also their governance is brought under the spotlight, evidencing: (i) the constraints that need to be fulfilled, and the potential benefits arising out of their presence; (ii) the compatibility and mutual adaptability between democratic governance in co-operatives and the governance of non-divided assets. |
| Keywords: | co-operative enterprises; indivisible reserves; common resources; rivalry; non-excludability; capital accumulation; governance |
| JEL: | B52 J54 K11 P12 P13 P14 |
| Date: | 2017–02–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:76721&r=hme |
| By: | Leila E. Davis (Department of Economics, Middlebury College); Joao Paulo A. de Souza (Department of Economics, Middlebury College); Gonzalo Hernandez (Department of Economics, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we analyze Minskian dynamics in the US economy via an empirical application of Minsky financing regime classifications to a panel of nonfinancial corporations. First, we map Minsky definitions of hedge, speculative and Ponzi finance onto firm-level data to describe the evolution of Minskian regimes. We highlight striking growth in the share of Ponzi firms in the post-1970 US, concentrated among small corporations. This secular growth in the incidence of Ponzi firms is consistent with the possibility of a long wave of increasingly fragile finance in the US economy. Second, we explore the possibility of short-run Minskian dynamics at a business-cycle frequency. Using linear probability models relating firms probability of being Ponzi to the aggregate output gap, which captures short-term macroeconomic fluctuations exogenous to individual firms, we find that aggregate downturns are correlated with an almost zero increased probability that firms are Ponzi. This result is corroborated by quantile regressions using a continuous measure of financial fragility, the interest coverage ratio, which identify almost zero effects of short-term fluctuations on financial fragility across the interest coverage distribution. Together, these results speak to an important question in the theoretical literature on financial fragility regarding the duration of Minskian cycles, and lend support, in particular, to the contention that Minskian dynamics may take the form of long waves, but do not operate at business cycle frequencies. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2017-08&r=hme |
| By: | Guschanski, Alexander; Onaran, Özlem |
| Abstract: | There has been a significant decline in the share of wages in GDP in both developed and developing countries since the 1980s. This paper analyses the determinants of the wage share (labour compensation as a ratio to value added) using sectoral data with country specific estimations for selected OECD countries. We compile a comprehensive sector-level dataset of eight OECD countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US) for the period of 1970 to 2011, which allows us to trace the developments in the wage share across high and low skilled sectors and within manufacturing and service industries. Our findings provide new insights with regard to the drivers of falling wage share. By conducting country specific estimations, we analyse how institutional differences in industrial relations, as well as social security and welfare regimes affect the wage share. Our findings lend strong support to the political economy approach to functional income distribution. Technological change had an impact, especially in Italy, the US and for the total country sample, but the effects are not robust with respect to the use of different specifications and the wage share in most countries in our sample appears to be driven by variables reflecting the bargaining power of labour such as union density, adjusted bargaining coverage and government spending. The relevance of these variables differs considerably across countries, lending support to our approach of country specific estimations. We find that globalisation had a strong impact on the wage share in all countries. The effect of globalisation on the wage share was least strong in Denmark. In Germany, and to a lesser extent in the UK, the effect is due to outward FDI and intermediate import penetration which reflects the impact of international outsourcing practices. Intermediate imports penetrations had no significant impact in Spain while FDI played a smaller role in France and the US. Different institutional variables appear to be relevant for each country. Germany exhibits the most robust positive effect of union density on the wage share. Conversely, collective bargaining coverage, together with social government spending, plays a more important role in France, the UK and the US. Financialisation had the most pronounced effect in the UK and the US, while it appears to be also relevant in Germany. We find mixed results for the effect of personal income inequality on the wage share. However, there is indicative confirmation for a negative effect in Germany, the UK and the US. |
| Keywords: | Wage share; income distribution; labour unions; bargaining |
| Date: | 2016–10–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gpe:wpaper:15847&r=hme |
| By: | Duncan Foley (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research) |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1706&r=hme |
| By: | Cédric Leterme |
| Abstract: | Le « tournant néolibéral » des années 1970 a fait l’objet d’analyses diverses et parfois contradictoires. Notre thèse se propose d’en enrichir la compréhension à travers une analyse discursive comparée de trois organisations internationales étroitement concernées par ces évolutions :la Banque mondiale, l’OCDE et l’OIT. Nous partons en effet du principe que le « tournant néolibéral » fut aussi un tournant discursif et que les organisations internationales en furent des acteurs et relais clés. Des relais parce que les tenants de la stratégie néolibérale ont cherché à la déployer dans et à travers ces institutions, mais des acteurs aussi parce que pour ce faire, les « néolibéraux » ont dû tenir compte des pratiques discursives et extra-discursives pré-instituées qui caractérisaient ces organisations internationales jusque-là. C’est ainsi que selon nous, mêmes des institutions hégémoniques comme la Banque mondiale et l’OCDE n’ont pas seulement reproduit la stratégie et le discours néolibéraux, elles l’ont aussi (et surtout) co-produit et co-déterminé selon leurs propres caractéristiques historiques et institutionnelles, avec des conséquences potentiellement diverses (voire conflictuelles). Et c’est encore plus le cas d’une institution comme l’OIT, dont le mandat et la structure la rendent structurellement incompatible avec le projet néolibéral. Sans véritable possibilité de s’y opposer de front, mais sans pouvoir également s’y conformer totalement sauf à renier jusqu’à sa propre raison d’être, il nous semble que la seule solution qu’il lui restait consistait dès lors à y « répondre stratégiquement », notamment d’un point de vue discursif. Pour le démontrer nous avons donc entrepris de réaliser une analyse lexicométrique de trois corpus de textes composés respectivement de tout ou parties des rapports sur le développement dans le monde de la Banque mondiale, des rapports d’activités de l’OCDE et des rapports annuels du Directeur Général de l’OIT publiés entre 1970 et 2015. À travers elle, nous avons cherché à comprendre les logiques de recontextualisation discursive qui ont accompagné le déploiement hégémonique néolibéral. |
| Keywords: | analyse critique de discours; organisations internationales; néolibéralisme; organisation internationale du travail; critical discourse analysis; international organizations; neoliberalism; international labor organization |
| Date: | 2017–01–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/244588&r=hme |
| By: | Onaran, Özlem; Tori, Daniele |
| Abstract: | Despite increasing profits private investment remained weak in Europe as firms directed their profits to financial speculation (Tori and Onaran, 2017). Not only high dividend payments but also increasing financial revenues of firms due to their surging financial activities crowd out private investment in physical machinery and equipment. Perversely, financial activities do not automatically provide more funds for productive activity. According to econometric estimations by Tori and Onaran (2017) using firm balance sheet data in Europe the rate of investment by the NFCs would have been 27% higher without the rise in interest and dividend payments, and 10% higher without the crowding-out effect of increasing financial incomes. A properly designed public investment and industrial policy also needs to be complemented by a corporate governance reform to reinstate the missing link between private investments and profits. Under the guidance of a macroeconomic policy framework focused on full employment and equality, which helps to define and improve the vector of choices of firms, shareholders themselves could see the long-term stability of the corporation as their main goal once again. |
| Keywords: | Financialization; Investment; Non-financial sector; Firm data; Europe; Financial development |
| JEL: | C23 G31 |
| Date: | 2017–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gpe:wpaper:16104&r=hme |
| By: | Frank Mueller-Langer; Benedikt Fecher; Dietmar Harhoff; Gert G. Wagner |
| Abstract: | Replication studies are considered a hallmark of good scientific practice. Yet they are treated among researchers as an ideal to be professed but not practiced. To provide incentives and favorable boundary conditions for replication practice, the main stakeholders need to be aware of what drives replication. Here we investigate how often replication studies are published in empirical economics and what types of journal articles are replicated. We find that from 1974 to 2014 less than 0.1% of publications in the top-50 economics journals were replications. We do not find empirical support that mandatory data disclosure policies or the availability of data or code have a significant effect on the incidence of replication. The mere provision of data repositories may be ineffective, unless accompanied by appropriate incentives. However, we find that higher-impact articles and articles by authors from leading institutions are more likely to be subject of published replication studies whereas the replication probability is lower for articles published in higher-ranked journals. |
| Keywords: | Replication, economics of science, science policy, economic methodology |
| JEL: | A1 B4 C12 C13 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1640&r=hme |
| By: | Naoki Yoshihara (Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst) |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2017-06&r=hme |