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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2017‒11‒12
twelve papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Grinza, Elena (University of Turin); Devicienti, Francesco (University of Turin); Rossi, Mariacristina (University of Turin); Vannoni, Davide (University of Turin) |
| Abstract: | Attitudes of women and men about how paid and unpaid work should be divided in the couple largely determine women's earnings and career prospects. Hence, it is important to understand how people's gender role attitudes are formed and evolve over the lifetime. In this paper, we concentrate on one of the most path-breaking events in life: becoming a parent. Using longitudinal panel data for the UK, we first show that, in general, entry into parenthood significantly shifts women's attitudes toward more conservative views, while leaving men unaffected. We also show that the impact on women emerges only after some time from the childbirth, suggesting that attitudes change relatively slowly over time and do not react immediately after becoming a parent. Finally, we show that the impact gets large and strongly significant for women and men whose prenatal attitudes were progressive. In particular, we find that the change in attitudes for such individuals increases as the postnatal arrangements are more likely to be traditional. Overall, these findings suggest that the change in attitudes is mainly driven by the emergence of a cognitive dissonance. Broad policy implications are drawn. |
| Keywords: | gender equality, gender role attitudes, entry into parenthood, cognitive dissonance, changes in the hormonal production, Understanding Society (US) data set |
| JEL: | J16 J13 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11088&r=hme |
| By: | Nora Waitkus; Olaf Groh-Samberg |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to construct the “space of capital” based on disaggregated measures of capital portfolios and to analyze the dynamics of class mobility over time. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “social space”, we argue that it is possible to directly assess the structural dimensions of the social space as a space of (economic and cultural) capital, including wealth as an important but often neglected form of economic capital. Using household panel data from 2002-2012 (SOEP), we apply latent class analysis in order to detect distinct classes based on specific capital portfolios. We find nine classes with diverging capital portfolios. When interpreting the nine latent classes, we find clear evidence for the two main axis of the social space, namely the vertical axis of the overall volume of capital, and the horizontal axis representing the composition of capital in terms of the relative weight of economic and cultural capital. Further exploration of class mobility reveals that the horizontal axis is even more stable over time. Most mobility occurs along the vertical axis of the social space, while there is only little horizontal mobility indicating that individuals rarely change their investment and accumulation strategies. This research adds to Bourdieu inspired class analysis as well as sociological perspectives on wealth and accumulation. |
| Keywords: | social space, Bourdieu, capital, social class, wealth, mobility, latent class analysis |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp938&r=hme |
| By: | Torsten Trimborn; Martin Frank; Stephan Martin |
| Abstract: | In the past decade there has been a growing interest in agent-based econophysical financial market models. The goal of these models is to gain further insights into stylized facts of financial data. We derive the mean field limit of the econophysical model by Cross, Grinfeld, Lamba and Seaman (Physica A, 354) and show that the kinetic limit is a good approximation of the original model. Our kinetic model is able to replicate some of the most prominent stylized facts, namely fat-tails of asset returns, uncorrelated stock price returns and volatility clustering. Interestingly, psychological misperceptions of investors can be accounted to be the origin of the appearance of stylized facts. The mesoscopic model allows us to study the model analytically. We derive steady state solutions and entropy bounds of the deterministic skeleton. These first analytical results already guide us to explanations for the complex dynamics of the model. |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1711.02573&r=hme |
| By: | Engelbert Stockhammer (Kingston University); Quirin Dammerer; Sukriti Kapur |
| Abstract: | The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the main research assessment for universities in the UK. It informs university league tables and the allocation of government research funding. This paper analyses the evaluations of the REF 2014 for Economics, Business, Politics and History. We analyse, first, from which journals, articles have been submitted; second, to what extent journal ratings and impact factors predict the REF´s evaluations; third, how many articles from heterodox economics journals have been submitted. We find that a small group of journals dominate the outputs submitted. Journal ratings and impact factors explain 86 to 89% of the variation in the output evaluations for Economics. These values are lower but still substantial for other disciplines. Few papers from heterodox economics journals were submitted to Economics. Overall, the REF in its present form marginalises heterodox economics, pushes it out of the discipline and endangers pluralism in economics research. |
| Keywords: | research assessment, Research Excellence Framework, journal impact factors, journal ratings, pluralism, heterodox economics |
| JEL: | A14 A20 B50 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pke:wpaper:pkwp1715&r=hme |
| By: | Olivier Malay (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) and Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics) |
| Abstract: | The last four decades have seen a proliferation of new indicators aiming to challenge GDP. But do they really produce new outcomes? By observing the rankings they produce (compared to those produced by GDP), the potential of 6 Beyond GDP indicators for indicating a way towards a better society has been examined. The conclusion is reached that rankings from indicators supported by powerful stakeholders are highly correlated with rankings according to GDP, demonstrating a low transformative potential. |
| Date: | 2017–11–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2017018&r=hme |
| By: | Bruno S. Frey |
| Abstract: | There is a fundamental difference between the natural and the social sciences due to reactivity. This difference remains even in the age of Artificially Intelligent Learning Machines and Big Data. Many academic economists take it as a matter of course that economics should become a natural science. Such a characterization misses an essential aspect of a social science, namely reactivity, i.e. human beings systematically respond to economic data, and in particular to interventions by economic policy, in a foreseeable way. To illustrate this finding, I use three examples from quite different fields: Happiness policy, World Heritage policy, and Science policy. |
| Keywords: | economics, social, and natural science, reactivity, data, happiness, economic policy |
| JEL: | A10 B40 C70 C80 D80 Z10 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6593&r=hme |
| By: | Bransch, Felix (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg); Kvasnicka, Michael (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg) |
| Abstract: | Using data on articles published in the top-five economic journals in the period 1991 to 2010, we explore whether the gender composition of editorial boards is related to the publishing success of female authors and to the quality of articles that get published. Our results show that female editors reduce, rather than increase, the share of articles that are (co-)authored by females. We also find evidence that female editors benefit article quality at low levels of representation on editorial boards, but harm article quality at higher levels. Several robustness checks corroborate these findings. Our results are broadly consistent with existing evidence on the behavior of gender-mixed hiring committees and of relevance for gender equality policy. |
| Keywords: | gender bias, citations, journals, editors |
| JEL: | A14 J16 J71 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11089&r=hme |
| By: | Pereira, Luiz C. Bresser |
| Abstract: | This paper resumes new developmentalism – a theoretical framework being defined since the early 2000s to understand middle-income countries. It contains a political economy, the beginning of a microeconomics and a macroeconomics. It is originated in development economics or classical developmentalism and in post-Keynesian macroeconomics. While classical developmentalism asked for protection of the manufacturing industry, new developmentalism asks for the levelling of the playing field, which the tendency to the cyclical and chronic overvaluation of the exchange rate denies. New developmentalism is focused in the current account and the corresponding exchange rate. It offers a new theory of the determination of the exchange rate, based on the distinction between a value and a price of the foreign money, and on the tendency to the overvaluation of the exchange rate. Counterintuitively, it argues that middleincome countries do not require foreign finance, and, so, it defends that developing countries show a balanced current account, or, if it faces the Dutch disease, a current account surplus proportional to the severity of the disease. |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fgv:eesptd:464&r=hme |
| By: | Alex Coram (University of Massachusetts Amherst) |
| Abstract: | Societies are often compared in terms of the relative shares of the domestic product controlled by government but we don’t have much by way of analytical tools to allow us to think about the ways in which changes in these shares affect the characteristics of production and distribution. This paper treats production and distribution as a cooperative game with a continuum of players. Outcomes depend on politics and economics. It has a number of unexpected results. Among these are that relative shares do not depend on the majority rule the production function and that the characteristics of inegalitarian and egalitarian systems may converge. |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ums:papers:2017-20&r=hme |
| By: | Eirini Andriopoulou; Alexandros Karakitsios; Panos Tsakloglou |
| Abstract: | The Greek crisis was the deepest and longest ever recorded in an OECD country in the postwar period. The output declined by over a quarter, the disposable income by more than 40%, while the unemployment rate exceeded 27%. This paper explores the effects of the crisis on the level and the structure of aggregate inequality and poverty using the data of EU-SILC for the period 2007-2014. The results show that inequality rose but the magnitude of the change varies across indices. The recorded increases are larger when the indices used are relatively more sensitive to changes close to the bottom of the income distribution. Unlike claims often made in the public discourse, the elderly improved their relative position in the income distribution while there was substantial deterioration in the relative position of the enlarged group of the unemployed. The contribution of disparities between educational groups to aggregate inequality declined while that of disparities between socio-economic groups rose. All poverty indicators suggest that poverty increased substantially, especially when “anchored” poverty lines are used. Substantial changes are observed regarding the structure of poverty. Despite an increase in the population share of households headed by pensioners, their contribution to aggregate poverty declined considerably, with a corresponding increase in the contribution of households headed by unemployed persons. These changes are starker when distribution-sensitive poverty indices are utilised. |
| Keywords: | Greece, inequality, poverty, decomposition analysis |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hel:greese:116&r=hme |
| By: | Gilberto Tadeu Lima (Department of Economics, University of Sao Paulo); Mark Setterfield (Department of Economics, New School for Social Research); Jaylson Jair da Silveira (Department of Economics and International Relations, Federal University of Santa Catarina) |
| Abstract: | Conventional wisdom suggests that the Great Moderation was caused by either good policy, good luck (favourable shocks), more efficient private sector behaviour (such as better inventory management), or more effective financial innovations. We show that it may, instead, have originated from the complementarity of an erroneous reading of the economy by central bankers and evolutionarily time-varying heterogeneity in inflation expectations formation within the private sector. One general finding of our analysis is that seemingly inadequate stabilization policies may, in fact, work. We comment on the broader ramifications for stabilization policy of this finding. |
| Keywords: | Great Moderation, monetary policy, inflation targeting, macroeconomic stability, heterogeneous inflation expectations, satisficing evolutionary dynamics |
| JEL: | B52 E12 E31 E32 E52 E58 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:new:wpaper:1729&r=hme |
| By: | Iheonu, Chimere; Ihedimma, Godfrey; Onwuanaku, Chigozie |
| Abstract: | This study empirically accessed the impact of institutional quality on economic performance in West Africa. The study employed the control of corruption, government effectiveness, regulatory quality and rule of law as institutional quality indicators as provided by the World Governance Indicators, WGI (2017). A panel data set of 12 West African countries from 1996 to 2015 was estimated using the fixed effect model, the random effect model and the panel two-stage least square technique. The result showed that all the indicators of institutional quality employed in the study have positive and significant impact on economic performance in West Africa when the fixed and random effect model estimation technique was employed but only government effectiveness was significant after taking account of endogeneity using the panel two-stage least square technique. The study concludes that economic performance in West Africa would be enhanced in the presence of improved institutions with more consideration to government effectiveness. |
| Keywords: | Institutional Quality, Economic Performance, Panel Data Analysis, West Africa |
| JEL: | A12 B41 B52 C01 C13 |
| Date: | 2017–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:82212&r=hme |