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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2026–10–19
six papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Jon D. Wisman |
| Abstract: | It is commonplace for contemporary American politicians to characterize as ideal the values prevalent during the early US Republic, ignoring that many critical socio-economic conditions that undergirded those values longer ago ceased to exist. Those conditions were radically altered during post-Civil War industrialization as increasing members of American society lacked independent status as owners in control of the resources and tools with which they worked. They were forced to work for others, suffer the humiliation of being bossed about, and the threat of unemployment. This degrading of work weakened democratic values, eroded community, transformed the household, and gave rise to the consumer culture that so irked Thorstein Veblen. This article, after examining the nature of work in pre-industrial America, addresses the subsequent process of proletarianization. It then details how the debasement of work transformed political values, weakened communities, altered the household, and steered worker families to increasingly seek status through consumption rather than through work and community, thereby eventually threatening environmental devastation. The final section addresses how two reforms – guaranteeing employment at living wages with reskilling where necessary and implementing measures to extend freedom and democracy into the workplace – could enable the U.S. to recapture the security, worker freedom, and community that pre-dated industrialization. These reforms are necessary for preserving democracy and avoiding ecological Armageddon. The political feasibility of these two reforms is that they would preserve capitalism, retaining its two most fundamental social institutions of private property and markets, albeit without exploitation and degraded work. |
| Keywords: | Debased labor, political values, guaranteed employment, workplace democracy. |
| JEL: | E21 E44 G01 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amu:wpaper:2026-01 |
| By: | Marco Due\~nas; Antoine Mandel |
| Abstract: | A growing number of countries are adopting policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, a process expected to reshape production systems and labour markets by altering relative prices and changing production and demand patterns across sectors. We develop an agent-based monetary input--output network model to analyse the medium-term effects of climate policies on production networks and sectoral labour allocation. The model features heterogeneous industries and households, incorporates greenhouse-gas emissions accounting, and is calibrated to a multi-regional input--output database covering the world economy. We simulate two alternative climate-policy scenarios over 2026--2035: one based on countries' nationally determined contributions and another targeting larger reductions in global emissions. The results reveal significant economy-wide reallocation: fossil-energy sectors contract, low-carbon energy sectors expand, and their positions within production networks change asymmetrically. Fossil energy loses relevance as a direct supplier and exerts less forward influence, while its remaining production becomes more dependent on intermediate inputs and upstream suppliers; low-carbon energy primarily strengthens its role as a supplier. Carbon pricing also generates sectoral labour gaps that, under mobility frictions, imply greater potential transitional unemployment. Because the model allows only limited technological change and adjustment within existing production links, the simulations provide a counterfactual assessment of how existing production structures respond to a relatively rapid climate transition, revealing the adjustment pressures that emerge when policy ambitions advance faster than the productive system's capacity to adapt. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.04018 |
| By: | Ricardo Alonzo Fern\'andez-Salguero |
| Abstract: | This study develops a survey-calibrated, path-dependent agent-based microsimulation for evaluating crime and violence reduction policies in Bolivia. A synthetic population is constructed from the 2025 Household Survey and the fourth-quarter 2025 Continuous Employment Survey using official expansion weights and cross-survey donor matching. The model combines heterogeneous agents, place-based risk, criminal adaptation, institutional capacity, community organization, and multiple policy channels. Uncertainty is propagated through adaptive Gaussian-process and tree-ensemble emulators, global sensitivity analysis, tempered ensemble MCMC, and predictive meta-calibration. Simulated portfolios include focused policing, community control, Guardabosques-type incentives, social prevention, environmental interventions, justice reforms, investigation, rehabilitation, and financial-network disruption. Results are interpreted as structural policy scenarios rather than causal forecasts, with explicit attention to displacement, distributional effects, implementation capacity, and multi-objective trade-offs. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.03895 |
| By: | Masyutina, Olga; Bolz, Susanna |
| Abstract: | As complex social systems face increasing environmental and societal pressures, understanding their resilience is central to sustainability transitions. We systematically review 65 empirical studies of resilience in subnational social systems and develop a conceptual synthesis of resilience through three complementary analytical lenses: disturbances, system capacities and spatial contexts. We first classify disturbances along three dimensions–temporal structure, origin and domain–highlighting their overlapping and often multi-causal nature. We further synthesize thirteen resilience characteristics into four interrelated capacities: structural, relational, governance and dynamic. Our findings show that resilience is shaped not by individual capacities but by their combination in response to different disturbances. Their prominence also varies across spatial scales, indicating that resilience is spatially embedded. We argue that resilience is therefore best understood as a place-based, multidimensional process emerging from interactions between disturbances, capacities and the contexts in which systems operate. |
| Keywords: | Resilience, Sustainability Transition, Social System, Subnational Level, Transformative Capacity |
| JEL: | O18 Q56 R58 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:atv:wpaper:2603 |
| By: | Paula Johanna Rodríguez Badillo |
| Abstract: | Female ex-combatants face numerous barriers to achieving financial independence and reintegrating into the labor market. These barriers are often linked to gender roles that force them to take on caregiving responsibilities that they were not xpected to perform within armed groups. As a result, ex-combatants face labor discrimination and a gap in their work xperience due to caregiving responsibilities, which can discourage them from participating in productive projects or job searches. |
| Keywords: | Ex-combatants; Empowerment; Gender Roles; and Economic Reintegration |
| JEL: | J16 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000176:023687 |
| By: | Nara Chung; Marwil Davila Fernandez |
| Abstract: | This paper extends Goodwin's (1967) predator-prey growth-cycle model to incorporate the negative impact of Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) on labor productivity. Using U.S. state-level data for 1998--2019, we first document that deteriorations in the labor share are followed by rising drug-induced mortality. We then build this link into the model through a novel discrete-choice mechanism in which the probability of OUD decreases with the wage share, so when real wages fail to keep pace with productivity growth, opioid use rises. This behavioral health channel feeds back into the economy through a productivity damage function. Applying the existence part of the Andronov-Hopf bifurcation theorem, we show that the resulting three-dimensional nonlinear system admits a limit cycle, as confirmed by our numerical simulations. Along the cycle, rising OUD paradoxically raises the employment rate, as falling productivity requires more labor per unit of output; across steady states, however, higher OUD prevalence is associated with a lower employment rate, consistent with evidence that opioid use disorder reduces labor force participation. Moreover, our numerical experiments show that OUD sensitivity to income widens fluctuations, while productivity sensitivity to OUD counterintuitively compresses them through a self-correcting feedback that speeds the recovery of the wage share. Policies that weaken the link between income and OUD, such as stronger social safety nets, stabilize the resulting dynamics. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.10356 |