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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2024‒07‒08
six papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Patel-Campillo, Anouk |
| Abstract: | World-systems analysts argue that households take on a structural role within the capitalist system to mediate pressures exerted by the state and economic actors. Underpinning this view is the supply of low-paid and waged labor by household members in the process of social reproduction and the role of households as sites of commodity consumption. Here, I argue that the analytical choice to use the features of low-waged households renders a partial analysis of their structural location within a multi-sited capitalist system. While acknowledging that households across the Global Commodity Chain (GCC) are neither spatially segregated (i.e., global North, global South) nor solely spaces of production or consumption, I suggest that households differ in their structural location within a multi-sited capitalist system, subject to their incidence on the instantiation of hierarchical capitalist relations. First, “core” households differ from their peripheral counterparts via their reliance on financial assetization and capital accumulation in the core for (intergenerational) social reproduction. Second, in the process of social reproduction, core household excess commodity consumption generates metabolic differentials that fuel hierarchical relations of production and place core households in a more central location within a multi-sited capitalist system compared to peripheral ones. Third, the analysis of hierarchical capitalist relations and GCCs focuses on capital accumulation and the extraction of (women’s) household unpaid labor in the periphery. I argue that to more fully capture the extraction of unpaid labor across the GCC, household fluidity and heterogeneity and associated variation in intra-household divisions of labor must be analytically considered. |
| Keywords: | capitalism; development; GCCs; gender; Global Commodity Chain; households; inequality |
| JEL: | N0 R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2023–08–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:123567&r= |
| By: | Davis, John B.; ; (Department of Economics Marquette University; Department of Economics Marquette University) |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the difference between mainstream and heterodox economics in terms of philosophy’s distinction between two types of temporal sequences governing events: the static, truth-tenseless before-after sequence and the dynamic, truth-tensed past-present-future sequence. Mainstream theory and optimization analysis employs the first. However, Aristotle showed long ago this implies fatalism. Heterodox explanations employ the second, which I argue implies people reflexively adjust their choices over time in a combined backward-looking and forward-looking way that rules out optimization. Central to this explanation of behavior is how uncertainty about the future is connected to uncertainty about the past. I show this can be explained in terms of how people engage in counterfactual thinking whereby their uncertainty about the future is investigated through how they re-examine their uncertainty about the past. This behavioral explanation affects how we interpret two different sets of temporal phenomena heterodoxy emphasizes: (i) irreversibility and path-dependence and (ii) emergence and cumulative causation. I argue this demonstrates the need for the open economic thinking heterodoxy employs, not the closed economic thinking the mainstream employs. |
| Keywords: | temporal sequences, fatalism, reflexive adjustment, future-past uncertainty, open economic thinking |
| JEL: | B41 B50 D01 D80 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mrq:wpaper:2024-03&r= |
| By: | Justine Monique Florine Ballon; Thomas Blondeel; Marius Chevallier (GEOLAB - Laboratoire de Géographie Physique et Environnementale - UBP - Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 - IR SHS UNILIM - Institut Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société - UNILIM - Université de Limoges - UCA [2017-2020] - Université Clermont Auvergne [2017-2020] - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne, GEOLAB-CE - Capital Environnemental - GEOLAB - Laboratoire de Géographie Physique et Environnementale - UBP - Université Blaise Pascal - Clermont-Ferrand 2 - IR SHS UNILIM - Institut Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société - UNILIM - Université de Limoges - UCA [2017-2020] - Université Clermont Auvergne [2017-2020] - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne); Orville Pletschette |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the democratic governance of large cooperatives (in terms of number of members) through the prism of systems and practices designed to strengthen member participation. We compare the evolution of formal and informal mechanisms supporting the dynamics of participative democracy at Railcoop and SmartCoop. This research is based on an ongoing action-research based on statistics and qualitative data. It sheds light on their practices, the tensions encountered and the experiments undertaken to reduce them. This working paper puts into perspective the initial results of a descriptive and comparative analysis of two schemes designed to increase member participation: circles at Railcoop and the Smart in Progress process at SmartCoop. In this respect, we demonstrate the importance of ongoing reflexivity on our practices, through surveys, collective writing, and spaces conducive to critical and contradictory discussions, provided this is done in a constructive and transparent manner. Beyond this, we show the value of highlighting the 5th and 6th principles of ICA - education, training and information on the one hand, and intercooperation on the other - between two cooperatives sharing issues relating to governance and democratic participation. |
| Keywords: | cooperative governance, democracy, participation, experimentation, action-research, democracy cooperative, social innovations |
| Date: | 2023–07–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04576634&r= |
| By: | Veselov, Dmitry; Yarkin, Alexander |
| Abstract: | Industrial policies, such as infrastructure investments and export tariffs, affect the allocation of labor and incomes across sectors, attracting substantial lobbying efforts by special interest groups. Yet, the link between structural change and lobbying remains underexplored. Using more than 150 years of data on parliamentary petitions in USA and Britain, we measure historical lobbying and document several stylized facts. First, lobbying over industrial policies follows a hump-shaped path in the course of structural change, while agricultural lobbying steadily declines. Second, big capitalists (manufacturers, merchants) are most active in lobbying for industrialization. Third, industrial concentration increases progressive lobbying, while concentrated landownership slows it down. We explain these patterns in a simple model of structural change augmented with a heterogeneous agents lobbying game. Model simulations match the dynamics of structural change, inequality, and lobbying for industrialization in the British data. |
| Keywords: | political economy, structural change, lobbying, wealth distribution, growth |
| JEL: | D33 D72 N10 N41 O14 O41 O43 P00 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1444&r= |
| By: | Ingela Alger; Jos\'e Ignacio Rivero-Wildemauwe |
| Abstract: | We conduct a laboratory experiment using framing to assess the willingness to ``sell a lemon'', i.e., to undertake an action that benefits self but hurts the other (the ``buyer''). We seek to disentangle the role of other-regarding preferences and (Kantian) moral concerns, and to test if it matters whether the decision is described in neutral terms or as a market situation. When evaluating an action, morally motivated individuals consider what their own payoff would be if -- hypothetically -- the roles were reversed and the other subject chose the same action (universalization). We vary the salience of role uncertainty, thus varying the ease for participants to envisage the role-reversal scenario. |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2405.13186&r= |
| By: | Budzinski, Oliver |
| Abstract: | Der vorliegende Beitrag wendet die dynamische Wettbewerbstheorie von Wolfgang Kerber und anderen auf aktuelle Fragen der Wettbewerbspolitik an. Damit zeigt der Beitrag, dass dynamische Wettbewerbstheorien sehr wohl zu konkreten wettbewerbspolitischen Empfehlungen führen und einen wichtigen Beitrag zum wettbewerbspolitischen Diskurs leisten können. Zu den aufgegriffenen wettbewerbspolitischen Themen gehören der As-Efficient-Competitor-Test in der Missbrauchskontrolle, die Kontrolle und Regulierung systemischer Marktmacht in digitalen Ökosystemen, anlassunabhängige Wettbewerbspolitik und sanktionsbewehrte Sektoruntersuchungen, sowie die Fusionskontrolle nicht-horizontaler Zusammenschlüsse. |
| Abstract: | This paper applies dynamic competition theory to current topics and controversies in competition policy. In doing so, it showcases how dynamic competition theory allows for specific competition policy recommendations and can contribute to the antitrust discourse. The current competition and antitrust policy topics that are addressed include the as-efficient-competitor-test in abuse control, the regulation of systemic market power in digital ecosystems, antitrust interventions based on proactive sector/industry investigations as well es merger control in relation to non-horizontal mergers and acquisitions. |
| Keywords: | dynamischer Wettbewerb, Wettbewerbspolitik, Antitrust, Innovationen, Kartellpolitik, Fusionskontrolle, Missbrauchsaufsicht, Marktmacht, evolutorischer Wettbewerb, Marktprozesstheorie, dynamic competition, competition policy, antitrust, innovation, cartel policy, merger control, abuse of dominance, market power, evolutionary competition, market process theory |
| JEL: | L40 L13 B52 K21 M21 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:297973&r= |