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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2024‒06‒24
twelve papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Gräbner-Radkowitsch, Claudius; Kapeller, Jakob |
| Abstract: | At its core, the discussion on the micro-macro link in heterodox economics is concerned with the correct treatment of aggregates and aggregation in social theory. In this chapter we survey heterodox approaches to the micro-macro link with a focus on shared understandings and convictions that apply across different schools of thought. In addition, we illuminate typical fallacies related to the treatment of aggregation and aggregates as well as the philosophical underpinnings of heterodox ontology to better understand conceptual differences between heterodox economics and competing approaches. Given that economics faces myriad problems of aggregation - as in the case of market interaction, macroeconomic aggregates, or interpersonal coordination and contracting - the quest to provide suitable conceptual tools and philosophical foundations to adequately address aggregates and aggregation should be of special interest to economists of different persuasions. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifsowp:296479&r= |
| By: | Petri, Fabio (University of Siena) |
| Abstract: | What of the first chapter of Marx’s Capital remains valid if one adopts Sraffian price theory? More than one might think, given that the thesis that labour is the substance of value must be abandoned; the two main new clarifications the chapter intended to contribute, namely the analysis of fetishism (with that of the forms of value which is its necessary premise), and the concrete labour/abstract labour distinction, remain valid. The reason why the first pages of the chapter are unclear and aprioristic is traced to Marx’s decision to postpone to Volume III the ‘compensation-of-deviations’ argument with its premise that commodities do not exchange in proportion to embodied labour, a decision which obliges him to assume in this chapter a strict labour theory of value without explanation of why it holds. Böhm-Bawerk’s interpretation of the ‘only-one-property-remains’ argument is criticised. Marx’s persuasion that when things are quantitatively comparable relative to a common quality there must be a common ‘substance’ in them determining that comparability is discussed. The need to ‘reduce’ labour to homogeneity clarifies the meaning of abstract labour but contradicts Marx’s insistence on the notions of ‘human labour in general’ and ‘equality and equivalence of all kinds of labour’. |
| Keywords: | Marx; Labour theory of value; fetishism; heterogeneous labour; Böhm-Bawerk |
| Date: | 2024–06–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:sraffa:0065&r= |
| By: | Raphael Porcherot (IDHES - Institutions et Dynamiques Historiques de l'Économie et de la Société - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - UP8 - Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - UEVE - Université d'Évry-Val-d'Essonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - ENS Paris Saclay - Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord - LABEX ICCA - UP13 - Université Paris 13 - Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPCité - Université Paris Cité - Université Sorbonne Paris Nord - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord); Mariano Féliz (IdIHCS - Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales [La Plata] - CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [Buenos Aires] - FaHCE - Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación [La Plata] - UNLP - Universidad Nacional de la Plata [Argentine], CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [Buenos Aires], UNLP - Universidad Nacional de la Plata [Argentine]) |
| Abstract: | In Marxist dependency theory, the uneven and combined development of productive forces across core and periphery is a key feature of capitalism. The unity of such sys- tematically differing components of the world economy is defined by the combination of borders and nation-wide productivity and labour remuneration standards. Periph- eral value spaces stand in a relationship of dependency with core value spaces, which provides the economic rational for the political domination of the latter over the former. The foundation of this dependency lies in the interaction between unequal exchange dynamic and the heightened exploitation of labour. Indeed, super-exploiting labour allow peripheral capitals to partially compensate for the value their are losing as a consequence of unequal exchange. For that reason, peripheral value spaces exhibit a fundamentally heteronomous and extroverted mode of development. This interaction takes place through the evolution of exchange rates, whose main functions is to verify the monetary character of the various currencies. Through the latter's perpetual comparison, they reproduce the general equivalent whose existence is a structural necessity for any market-based economy, such is capitalism. Doing so, exchange rates formally mediate value spaces that nonetheless retain systematically diverging characteristics. However, on the one hand, Marxist dependency theory does not offer an unified exchange rate theory. On the other, within Marxist economic literature, while several attempts at expounding a model of exchange rate determination are to be found, they yield differing conclusions and more importantly were not integrated with the debates on dependency. This article proposes to revise differing Marxist understanding of the exchange rate, seeing the latter's determination as key mechanisms leading to the reproduction of dependency. It thus discusses insights from Shaikh, Carchedi, Astarita and Ricci with the dependency tradition originating in Marini's work. On this basis, we suggest that as they contributes to the verification of the socially acknowledged monetary character of the various currencies, exchange rates determine the magnitude of unequal exchange. Consequently, the latter is best seen not as a transfer of value but as a loss of value, in contrast with the traditional "phlogistic" understanding of unequal exchange that can be found in the literature on unequal ex- change, especially in Emmanuel's writings. Finally, the point is to explore how the mediating role of exchange rate necessarily implies the super-exploitation of labour-power. |
| Keywords: | exchange rate, dependency, Value transfers, Unequal exchange |
| Date: | 2024–06–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cepnwp:hal-04599634&r= |
| By: | Ranaldi, Marco |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the concept, measurement, principal stylized facts, and normative implications of compositional inequality. Compositional inequality refers to how the shares of capital and labor income vary along the income distribution. This analysis is valuable for several reasons. From a macroeconomic perspective, it elucidates the link between functional and personal distributions of income, which is crucial for addressing the drivers of income inequality in a context of AI-driven, technology-augmenting capital accumulation. From a comparative economic perspective, it locates economic systems on the continuum between two extremes: classical capitalism, where the rich earn predominantly from capital and the poor from labor, and new capitalism, where the composition of capital and labor is uniform across the distribution. We refer to the entire range of systems along this continuum as the distributional varieties of capitalism. Recent empirical studies indicate that, in most countries, we are far from classical capitalism, though with notable exceptions, such as Latin American countries. This underscores the need to evaluate the benefits of compositional equality. The paper concludes that compositional equality is desirable for at least two reasons: it promotes fairness and supports an inclusive, profit-driven regime of accumulation and growth. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper) |
| Date: | 2024–05–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:75ghp&r= |
| By: | Mesoudi, Alex (University of Exeter); Jimenez, Angel V; Jensen, Keith; Chang, Lei |
| Abstract: | Cumulative cultural evolution, where populations accumulate ever-improving knowledge, technologies and social customs, is arguably a unique feature of human sociality and responsible for our species’ ecological dominance of the planet. However, at the heart of cumulative cultural evolution is a cooperative dilemma. Assuming asocial learning is more costly than social learning, social learners can act as ‘information free-riders’ by copying innovations from asocial learners without paying the cost. This cost asymmetry will reduce innovation, inhibiting cumulative culture. Innovators might respond by protecting their knowledge and keeping the benefits to themselves – ‘information hoarding’ - but then others cannot build on their discoveries and again cumulative culture is inhibited. Here we formally model information free-riding and information hoarding within a cumulative cultural evolution framework using both analytical and agent-based models. Model 1 identifies the restrictive conditions under which information sharing can evolve in the face of information free-riding and hoarding. Models 2-4 then show how three mechanisms known to favour cooperation in non-informational contexts - kin selection, reputation-based partner choice and cultural group selection – can also solve the informational cooperative dilemma and facilitate cumulative cultural evolution, each with distinct signatures potentially detectable in historical, ethnographic and other empirical data. |
| Date: | 2024–05–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:a9zty&r= |
| By: | Pierre Gosselin (IF); A\"ileen Lotz |
| Abstract: | In a series of precedent papers, we have presented a comprehensive methodology, termed Field Economics, for translating a standard economic model into a statistical field-formalism framework. This formalism requires a large number of heterogeneous agents, possibly of different types. It reveals the emergence of collective states among these agents or type of agents while preserving the interactions and microeconomic features of the system at the individual level. In two prior papers, we applied this formalism to analyze the dynamics of capital allocation and accumulation in a simple microeconomic framework of investors and firms.Building upon our prior work, the present paper refines the initial model by expanding its scope. Instead of considering financial firms investing solely in real sectors, we now suppose that financial agents may also invest in other financial firms. We also introduce banks in the system that act as investors with a credit multiplier. Two types of interaction are now considered within the financial sector: financial agents can lend capital to, or choose to buy shares of, other financial firms. Capital now flows between financial agents and is only partly invested in real sectors, depending on their relative returns. We translate this framework into our formalism and study the diffusion of capital and possible defaults in the system, both at the macro and micro level.At the macro level, we find that several collective states may emerge, each characterized by a distinct level of average capital and investors per sector. These collective states depend on external parameters such as level of connections between investors or firms' productivity.The multiplicity of possible collective states is the consequence of the nature of the system composed of interconnected heterogeneous agents. Several equivalent patterns of returns and portfolio allocation may emerge. The multiple collective states induce the unstable nature of financial markets, and some of them include defaults may emerge. At the micro level, we study the propagation of returns and defaults within a given collective state. Our findings highlight the significant role of banks, which can either stabilize the system through lending activities or propagate instability through loans to investors. |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2405.10338&r= |
| By: | Takeshi Kato; Mohammad Rezoanul Hoque |
| Abstract: | Reducing wealth inequality and increasing utility are critical issues. This study reveals the effects of redistribution and consumption morals on wealth inequality and utility. To this end, we present a novel approach that couples the dynamic model of capital, consumption, and utility in macroeconomics with the interaction model of joint business and redistribution in econophysics. With this approach, we calculate the capital (wealth), the utility based on consumption, and the Gini index of these inequality using redistribution and consumption thresholds as moral parameters. The results show that: under-redistribution and waste exacerbate inequality; conversely, over-redistribution and stinginess reduce utility; and a balanced moderate moral leads to achieve both reduced inequality and increased utility. These findings provide renewed economic and numerical support for the moral importance known from philosophy, anthropology, and religion. The revival of redistribution and consumption morals should promote the transformation to a human mutual-aid economy, as indicated by philosopher and anthropologist, instead of the capitalist economy that has produced the current inequality. The practical challenge is to implement bottom-up social business, on a foothold of worker coops and platform cooperatives as a community against the state and the market, with moral consensus and its operation. |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2405.13341&r= |
| By: | Li Mingqian |
| Abstract: | The connotation of transaction costs has never been definitively determined, and the independence of the concept has never been rigorously demonstrated. This paper delves into the thought systems of several prominent economists in the development of transaction cost economics, starting from first-hand materials. By combining multiple works of the authors, it reconstructs the true meanings and identifies endogeneity issues and logical inconsistencies. The conclusion of this paper is bold. Previous research has been largely filled with misinterpretations and misunderstandings, as people have focused solely on the wording of transaction cost definitions, neglecting the nature of transaction costs. The intention of transaction cost theory has been unwittingly assimilated into the objects it intends to criticize. After delineating the framework of "transaction costs-property rights-competition", this paper reconstructs the concept of transaction costs and the history of transaction cost concepts, providing a direct response to this theoretical puzzle that has plagued the academic community for nearly a century. |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2405.09087&r= |
| By: | Hanappi, Hardy |
| Abstract: | Predictions and hopes are different things. Predictions are based on past empirical observations. They single out what seem to be essential variables and the relationships between them and assume that their importance will prevail in the future. Hopes add a component to a prediction, namely an evaluation, which refers back to the entity that produces the prediction. The path-breaking book of Neumann and Morgenstern started with a concise, axiomatic formalisation of utility theory, id est the microeconomic conceptualisation of hopes, and in the following chapters steps into the jungle of strategic decision-making, id est making predictions about sets of strategic outcomes, commonly known as game theory . This paper inverts this sequence: first predictions, then hopes. The reason is simple. The idea that hopes can be encapsulated in a rigid setup of a preference order of an individual human decision-maker is misleading. Hopes are dynamic, hopes are emerging; and not at all inborn properties of human individuals. Most of them grow out of a rich and informed communication sphere. And in this information sphere, which so far has not been reduced to a unified axiomatic formal model of the ‘information sphere of the human species’, the emergence of preliminary predictions made by social entities is the first step towards hopes. This is why preliminary predictions are described before the emerging hopes are taken into the picture. Both, predictions and hopes, remain in a preliminary and unprecise state – contrary to the aspirations of game theory. But note that this approach allows much better for a flexible response to changing theoretical needs than to rely on so-called ‘heroic’ assumptions. In reconnecting hopes and predictions an additional advantage is that a mixture of pessimism and optimism can be achieved, which is a necessary ingredient for the stimulation of progress. |
| Keywords: | Political Economy, Globalisation |
| JEL: | B50 F01 P00 |
| Date: | 2024–05–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:121008&r= |
| By: | Ngutuku, Elizabeth; Okwany, Auma |
| Abstract: | This paper draws on biographical research among the Akamba and the Luo communities in Eastern and Western Kenya, respectively. Our research explored how practices of adolescence as a process, an institution, and a performance of identity interact with colonial modernities and imaginaries in complex ways. The biographical research was carried out predominantly with women born in the late colonial period in Kenya. We provide critical reflections on the process and affordances of our embodied storytelling approach, which we position as an Africanist methodology and a decolonial research practice. This research and approach provided women with a space to narrate and perform their lived experience, potentially disrupting epistemic inequities that are embedded in the way research on growing up in the past is carried out. The discussions show how colonialism interacted with other factors, including gender and generational power, tradition, girls’ agency, and other life characteristics like poverty and family situation, in order to influence the lived experiences of women. Going beyond the narratives of victimhood that characterise coming of age in similar spaces, we present women’s emergent, incomplete, and incongruent agency. We position this agency as the diverse ways in which people come to terms with their difficult contexts. The discussion also points to the need for unsettling the settled thinking about girlhood and coming of age in specific historical spaces in the global South |
| Keywords: | becoming; identity; colonial girlhood; storytelling; ubuntu; coming of age |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2024–04–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:123520&r= |
| By: | Alice Gillerot (VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement); Philippe Jeanneaux (Territoires - Territoires - AgroParisTech - VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne, VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement); Etienne Polge (INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, Territoires - Territoires - AgroParisTech - VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne, ACT - Département sciences pour l'action, les transitions, les territoires - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | Collective action among farmers is regularly presented as a driver for the adoption of agroecological practices on farms. This study proposes to extend the analysis of relational drivers in the implementation of changes in practices beyond peer groups, by looking at their collective organization around territorialized supply chains involving other actors. More specifically, this paper proposes to study the role that this collective organization around territorial supply chains plays in the changes toward agroecological practices carried out on farms. The study of the individual farm trajectories as a chain of events is an approach that allows the understanding and analysis of changes in practices. As we are interested in coordination mechanisms based on interactions between actors as a driver for agroecological transition, we mobilize the framework and tools of social network analysis. In particular, in order to analyse the relational drivers in the trajectories of changes practices, we mobilize the relational chain approach through the method of quantified narratives. This approach allows us to understand changes in practices on farms as collective actions, through the study of relationships activated by farmers in order to have access to different types of resources during their trajectory. Thus, our work feeds the literature mobilizing the method of quantified narratives for the analysis of farm transition trajectories, which we modulate by focusing on the trajectory of a particular cropping system analysed through the agronomic and socio-economic principles of agroecology. We conducted semi-structured interviews with eight farmers who are members of a territorial organic wheat-flour- bread supply chain collective that includes a miller and a baker, all located in the plain of Limagne (Puy-de-Dôme, France). Following these interviews focused on their changes in wheat-growing practices, we identified five phases of agronomic and socio-economic coherence in their trajectories, that we evaluated through the prism of the agroecological principles. We then identified the relationships activated by the farmers to access the various resources needed to carry out the changes in practices during these different phases. Based on their trajectories, a typology of farms was created. This typology helps to understand the different roles played by farmers' collectives developing territorial supply chains in the different types of farms, by analysing during which phases of the trajectory they intervene, to provide access to which resources, in articulation with which other actors. Although the interests for participation vary between the different types of farms, it appears that the farmers' collective developing territorial supply chains systematically give access to commercial, cognitive, social and material resources. As a result, they favour access to strategic resources on the farms, making it possible to couple changes in agricultural practices and their economic valorisation. These resources contribute to a change in the farmers' posture during their trajectory, moving from a role of raw material producers to a role of co-designers of agroecological products. |
| Abstract: | L'action collective entre agriculteurs est régulièrement présentée comme un levier pour la mise en oeuvre de changements de pratiques agroécologiques dans les exploitations agricoles. Cette étude propose d'ouvrir l'analyse des déterminants relationnels dans l'adoption de changements de pratiques au-delà des groupes de pairs en s'intéressant à leur organisation collective autour de filières territoriales faisant intervenir d'autres acteurs. Pour ce faire, la méthode des narrations quantifiées a été mobilisée dans le cadre d'entretiens semi-directifs menés auprès des 8 agriculteurs membres d'un collectif filière territoriale intégrant un meunier et un boulanger. L'analyse de ces trajectoires a permis la création d'une typologie des fermes favorisant la compréhension du rôle que joue le collectif filière territoriale dans les changements de pratiques menés par ses différents membres. Bien que les intérêts pour la participation au collectif varient entre les différents types de fermes, il ressort que le collectif donne systématiquement accès à des ressources tant commerciales, que cognitives, sociales et matérielles. De ce fait, le collectif favorise l'accès à des ressources stratégiques dans les exploitations agricoles permettant de coupler la mise en oeuvre de changements de pratiques agricoles et leur valorisation économique. Ces ressources contribuent à un changement de posture des agriculteurs au cours de leur trajectoire, passant d'un rôle d'exécutants producteurs de matières premières à un rôle de coconcepteurs de produits agroécologiques. |
| Keywords: | Farm, transition trajectories, agroecological practices, farmers’ collective, quantified narratives, Exploitation agricole, trajectoires de transition, pratiques agroécologiques, collectifs agricoles, narrations quantifiées |
| Date: | 2024–05–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03962520&r= |
| By: | Marchenko, Eliazar |
| Abstract: | This paper introduces the cyclical market transparency (CMT) theory - a concept of cyclical market transparency levels, presenting a view that transparency in a market, like economic growth levels, varies over the period of the economic cycle. The theory suggests that the clarity of market operations and the “transparency level” in a market vary over the economic cycle; this idea can be applied both to the macroeconomic performance of the economy overall and the performance of an individual firm or market. Transparency level will be defined as the degree to which information about the operations, financial performance, and regulatory compliance of companies within that market is available and understandable to all stakeholders, including investors, regulators, and the general public. This includes data on financial performance, regulatory compliance, corporate governance, and market operations. This model reflects that market transparency improves during periods of economic boom because of increased regulations and corporate disclosures driven by economic activity and higher levels of scrutiny. On the other hand, transparency tends to decrease during economic downturns and recession periods as companies may conceal poor performances or relax compliance efforts due to limited resources and budget constraints. |
| Date: | 2024–05–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:q9tfw&r= |