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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2020‒10‒12
twelve papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Jonathan F. Cogliano; Roberto Veneziani; Naoki Yoshihara |
| Abstract: | This article surveys computational approaches to classical-Marxian economics. These approaches include a range of techniques - such as numerical simulations, agent-based models, and Monte Carlo methods - and cover many areas within the classical-Marxian tradition. We focus on three major themes in classical-Marxian economics, namely price and value theory; inequality, exploitation, and classes; and technical change, profitability, growth and cycles. We show that computational methods are particularly well-suited to capture certain key elements of the vision of the classical-Marxian approach and can be fruitfully used to make significant progress in the study of classical-Marxian topics. |
| Keywords: | Computational Methods, Agent-Based Models, Classical Economists, Marx |
| JEL: | C63 B51 B41 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mab:wpaper:2020-02&r=all |
| By: | Giovanni Scarano |
| Abstract: | Some recent contributions to economic literature have highlighted the role of corporate savings decisions by big corporations in devoting their profits to direct investment in capital goods, showing how this role is affected by the features of corporate governance and the forms of competition, but also by the possibilities of holding liquid financial assets bearing high returns. However, at the macroeconomic level, some of these analyses show a fallacy of composition in explaining the effects of financialisation on real aggregate investment. The paper proposes an analytical framework in which the growing financialisation of big corporations, interacting with financial globalization, can play a major role in timing the rhythms of real investment in a part of the world economic system. Moreover, the paper shows how the liquidity degree of the assets can also be a very important determinant in portfolio choices by corporations, in close connection with business fluctuations. |
| Keywords: | Investment theory, Corporate Savings, Capital Movements, Financialisation, Financial Crises |
| JEL: | B51 E11 E12 E32 F23 G35 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtr:wpaper:0256&r=all |
| By: | Giovanni Scarano |
| Abstract: | The share of surplus devoted to direct investment in capital goods by big corporations also depends on their corporate savings decisions, which are closely connected not only to the features of corporate governance and the forms of competition, but also to the possibilities of holding liquid financial assets bearing high returns. Financial globalization, multiplying the potential range of financial instruments available to big corporations’ portfolios and creating new ways to access the high profits produced in the emergent markets, can contribute to change the portfolio composition. The paper deals with some contributions that analyse the effects of financial globalization on portfolio management and investment decisions in big corporations, seeking to determine how they may be playing a major role in timing the rhythms of real investment. The main objective is to understand whether these models can account for the tendency to put growing shares of social surplus into speculative channels. |
| Keywords: | Investment theory, Corporate Savings, Capital Movements, Financialisation, Financial Crises |
| JEL: | B51 E11 E12 E32 F23 G35 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtr:wpaper:0255&r=all |
| By: | Hadrien Saiag (IIAC - Institut interdisciplinaire d'anthropologie du contemporain - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales) |
| Abstract: | This paper considers the way in which the financial practices of informal workers changed during the Kirchner governments (2003-2015). In this period, popular economy workers massively accessed to consumer credit, as a consequence of their incorporation into the social protection system and the partial formalisation of precarious jobs. Workers experienced this change in an ambivalent way: while accessing to consumer credit is considered an element of social inclusion, it also exposes workers to a new form of exploitation, based on the discrepancy between the (monthly based) time of finance and the (erratic) time of work, that tend to exacerbate inequalities. In order to include without exploiting, it is thus necessary to connect finance with social rights. |
| Abstract: | El crédito al consumo en los sectores populares argentinos Entre inclusión y explotación (Rosario Resumen Este artículo analiza las transformaciones de las prácticas financieras de los sectores populares del cordón industrial rosarino durante los gobiernos kirchneristas. En este periodo, los trabajadores de la economía popular accedieron por primera vez al crédito al consumo de forma masiva, como consecuencia de su incorporación al sistema de protección social y de la formalización parcial de trabajos precarios. Los trabajadores percibieron esta transformación de forma ambivalente: por un lado, el acceso a dicho crédito significó una forma de inclusión para quienes no habían tenido acceso a este por falta de ingresos estables; por otro lado, expuso a los trabajadores de la economía popular a una nueva forma de explotación basada en el desfasaje temporal entre las finanzas y el trabajo precario, que agudizó las estratificaciones vigentes dentro de los sectores populares. Para incluir sin explotar, resulta imprescindible vincular finanzas y derechos. Abstract This paper considers the way in which the financial practices of informal workers changed during the Kirchner governments (2003-2015). In this period, popular economy workers massively accessed to consumer credit, as a consequence of their incorporation into the social protection system and the partial formalisation of precarious jobs. Workers experienced this change in an ambivalent way: while accessing to consumer Palabras clave |
| Keywords: | Debt,Financial exploitation,Popular economy,Temporalities,Consumo,Deuda,Explotación financiera,Economía popular,Temporalidades |
| Date: | 2020–07–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02934836&r=all |
| By: | Siebers, Peer Olaf; Herath, Dinuka; Bardone, Emanuele; Farahbakhsh, Siavash; Knudsen, Peter Gloggengiehser; Madsen, Jens Koed; Mufti, Mehwish; Neumann, Martin; Richards, Dale; Seri, Raffaello; Secchi, Davide |
| Abstract: | Purpose: This viewpoint article is concerned with an attempt to advance organisational plasticity (OP) modelling concepts by using a novel community modelling framework (PhiloLab) from the social simulation community to drive the process of idea generation. In addition, the authors want to feed back their experience with PhiloLab as they believe that this way of idea generation could also be of interest to the wider evidence-based human resource management (EBHRM) community. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used some workshop sessions to brainstorm new conceptual ideas in a structured and efficient way with a multidisciplinary group of 14 (mainly academic) participants using PhiloLab. This is a tool from the social simulation community, which stimulates and formally supports discussions about philosophical questions of future societal models by means of developing conceptual agent-based simulation models. This was followed by an analysis of the qualitative data gathered during the PhiloLab sessions, feeding into the definition of a set of primary axioms of a plastic organisation. Findings: The PhiloLab experiment helped with defining a set of primary axioms of a plastic organisation, which are presented in this viewpoint article. The results indicated that the problem was rather complex, but it also showed good potential for an agent-based simulation model to tackle some of the key issues related to OP. The experiment also showed that PhiloLab was very useful in terms of knowledge and idea gathering. Originality/value: Through information gathering and open debates on how to create an agent-based simulation model of a plastic organisation, the authors could identify some of the characteristics of OP and start structuring some of the parameters for a computational simulation. With the outcome of the PhiloLab experiment, the authors are paving the way towards future exploratory computational simulation studies of OP. |
| Keywords: | Agent-based modelling; Community modelling; Disorganisation; Organisational behaviour; PhiloLab; Plasticity |
| JEL: | J50 |
| Date: | 2020–09–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:106630&r=all |
| By: | Lorenzo Esposito; Giuseppe Mastromatteo |
| Abstract: | Since the 2008 crisis, the economics literature has shown a renewed interest in Keynes's "beauty contest" (BC) as a fundamental aspect of the functioning of financial markets. We argue that to understand the importance of the BC, psychological and informational factors are of small importance, and a dynamic-structural approach should be followed instead: the BC framework is paramount because it is rooted in the historical trajectory of capitalism and it is not simply a consequence of "irrational" (i.e., biased) agents. In this genuine form, the BC mechanism allows one to understand the main trends of a financialized world. Moreover, the conventional nature of financial markets provides a sound method for assessing different economic policies whose effectiveness depends on how much they can influence the convention itself. This alternative understanding of the BC can be used to start the needed rethinking of economics, urged by the crisis, that is for now reduced to studying the financial and psychological "imperfections" of the market. |
| Keywords: | Financial Crisis; Financialization; Behavioral Economics; Herd Behavior; Convention |
| JEL: | B15 E12 G01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_972&r=all |
| By: | Harold M. Hastings; Tai Young-Taft; Chih-Jui Tsen |
| Abstract: | In a seminal 1972 paper, Robert M. May asked: "Will a Large Complex System Be Stable?" and argued that stability (of a broad class of random linear systems) decreases with increasing complexity, sparking a revolution in our understanding of ecosystem dynamics. Twenty-five years later, May, Levin, and Sugihara translated our understanding of the dynamics of ecological networks to the financial world in a second seminal paper, "Complex Systems: Ecology for Bankers." Just a year later, the US subprime crisis led to a near worldwide "great recession," spread by the world financial network. In the present paper we describe highlights in the development of our present understanding of stability and complexity in network systems, in order to better understand the role of networks in both stabilizing and destabilizing economic systems. A brief version of this working paper, focused on the underlying theory, appeared as an invited feature article in the February 2020 Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences newsletter (Hastings et al. 2020). |
| Keywords: | Stability; Complexity; May-Wigner; Noise; Subprime Crisis; Liquidity Shock |
| JEL: | C02 C62 E17 H12 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_971&r=all |
| By: | Roger Backhouse (University of Birmingham [Birmingham], Erasmus University Rotterdam); Antoinette Baujard (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon); Tamotsu Nishizawa (Teikyo University) |
| Abstract: | Our forthcoming book, Welfare Theory, Public Action and Ethical Values challenges the belief that, until modern welfare economics introduced issues such as justice, freedom and equality, economists adopted what Amartya Sen called "welfarism." This is the belief that the welfare of society depends solely on the ordinal utilities of the individuals making up the society. Containing chapters on some of the leading twentieth-century economists, including Walras, Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, Samuelson, Musgrave, Hicks, Arrow, Coase and Sen, as well as lesser-known figures, including Ruskin, Hobson and contributors to the literature on capabilities, the book argues that, whatever their theoretical commitments, when economists have considered practical problems they have adopted a wider range of ethical values, attaching weight to equality, justice and freedom. Part 1 explains the concepts of welfarism and non-welfarism and explores ways in which economists have departed from welfarism when tackling practical problems and public policy. Part 2 explores the reasons for this. When moving away from abstract theories to consider practical problems it is often hard not to take an ethical position and economists have often been willing to do so. We conclude that economics needs to recognise this and to become more of a moral science. |
| Keywords: | individualism,economics,Welfarism,non-welfarism,welfare,public policy,ethics |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02937994&r=all |
| By: | S.Saravanan (UGC Post Doctoral Fellow, Madras School of Economics); Devi Prasad DASH (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, Punjab-140001) |
| Abstract: | Microcredit is essentially utilised as the source of empowerment among the poor women in both rural and urban areas of the Indian states. Based on a panel of the Indian states for the period 2007 to 2014, our study examines the impact of women empowerment via the number of women Self Help Groups and women employment opportunities. Our empirical evidence finds that both are complementary to each other. Furthermore, we notice that changes in percapita income and poverty rate influence the scope for women employment and outreach of women SHGs across the Indian states. Factors like increasing access to bank loans and female literacy also help improve the women empowerment drive. The implications of the findings are discussed in the paper. |
| Keywords: | Microfinance, Self-Help Group, Women Empowerment, India |
| JEL: | G21 C23 J16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mad:wpaper:2016-164&r=all |
| By: | Lucrezia Fanti; Dario Guarascio; Massimo Moggi |
| Abstract: | This project explores the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on business models, market structure, organization and work. By adopting a history-friendly perspective, the present contribution traces a stylized history of the AI technological domain in order to highlight moments in time, places and sectoral domains that fostered its diffusion and transformative potential. Some descriptive analyses are also provided to investigate the diffusion of AI technologies and, at the same time, the underlying industrial and market dynamics. |
| Keywords: | Artificial intelligence; industrial dynamics; work organization |
| Date: | 2020–09–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssa:lemwps:2020/25&r=all |
| By: | Jain, Varinder |
| Abstract: | Informal sector employment suffers from not only inadequate and irregular earnings but they also remain exposed to a variety of vulnerabilities. Available research has been general in nature as most of the time, the analysis has remained narrative and there has been no systematic attempt to arrive at a framework to conceptualise and quantify the incidence of vulnerability in informal manufacturing sector so as to examine its correlates and the related characteristics that influence the exposure to vulnerability. Such lacunae in research provide us an opportunity to arrive at a holistic framework for the quantification of vulnerability in informal manufacturing sector. This paper discussing various conceptual and analytical issues implicit in the quantification of vulnerability exposure in informal manufacturing sector serves as a first step towards that direction. |
| Keywords: | Informal Sector, Informal Manufacturing, Vulnerability, Livelihood Insecurity, Working Poor |
| JEL: | A1 J01 J46 J62 J71 J81 |
| Date: | 2020–05–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:103158&r=all |
| By: | Antoinette Baujard (GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'analyse et de théorie économique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon); Judith Favereau (TRIANGLE - Triangle : action, discours, pensée politique et économique - ENS Lyon - École normale supérieure - Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - IEP Lyon - Sciences Po Lyon - Institut d'études politiques de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet [Saint-Étienne] - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Charles Girard (IRPhiL - Institut de recherches philosophiques de Lyon - UJML - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 - Université de Lyon) |
| Abstract: | Cette introduction insiste sur les difficultés et les enjeux de la distinction entre les approches positives et normatives des normes. La vie collective est organisée par des normes, mais qu'elles ordonnent les comportements dans les faits n'impliquent pas qu'elles soient désirables. Une stricte description des normes peut nécessiter de prendre en compte les questions éthiques, lesquelles peuvent être traduites à l'aide de la méthode axiomatique ; choisir les normes en revanche est une activité de nature fondamentalement normative, qui interroge la légitimité des décisions et des évaluations. La possibilité même de démarcation entre positif et normatif ne va pas de soi : en particulier en économie du bien-être, les approches standards qui visent à éviter les jugements de valeur (le welfarisme) ou à les isoler (l'axiomatique) peuvent s'avérer problématiques. Pour conclure, nous présentons les quatre articles du numéro qui illustrent les quatre étapes de cette réflexion sur la normativité. |
| Keywords: | positif,normatif,normes,jugements de valeurs,éthique,régularités,Démarcation |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02936147&r=all |