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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Virginie Gouverneur |
| Abstract: | A section of Mill’s Principles (1848) is about women’s low wages. Contemporary commentators who have studied it minimize its normative content. According to them, Mill’s belief in the naturalness of the traditional sexual division of roles prevent him from proposing efficient remedies to male-female wage differentials and occupational segregation by sex. We propose another reading of Mill’s analysis, as a protest against power relations which, pervading Victorian society, cause wage differences unjustified by differences in efficiency. Its focus is not occupational segregation by sex. Mill addresses the issue elsewhere, then identifying distinct causes of women’s limited entry into skilled occupations. |
| Keywords: | John Stuart Mill, gender pay gap, discrimination, occupational segregation by sex. |
| JEL: | B1 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2018-43&r=hpe |
| By: | Claude Diebolt (BETA, Université de Strasbourg); Magali Jaoul-Grammare (BETA, Université de Strasbourg) |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afc:wpaper:08-18&r=hpe |
| By: | Jael, Paul |
| Abstract: | This paper focuses on the debate held in the twenties and thirties of the last century between libertarian economists and socialist economists, following the denial by the first ones of the feasibility of a socialist economy. This controversy is well known to specialists and has been widely commented. It seemed to me useful to initiate non-specialists in an original way: by having the controversy speaking by itself. We review the main contributions and summarise their arguments with, initially, the bare minimum of personal comments. Walrasian general equilibrium serves as a reference for the defenders of market socialism in the controversy. But the concept of competition behind this theory is very incomplete; it is purely passive. It follows that the market socialism which emanates from it is not really a MARKET socialism. It is lacking the competition which innovates. Markets for capital goods are also lacking in theses models. Our paper then turns to a new generation of socialist models involving this real competition. We review two models proposed by Bardhan and Roemer and then exhibit a personal model. This type of model is facing a modern criticism whose central concept is the "soft budget constraint". |
| Keywords: | planification, socialisme de marché, calcul socialiste, Barone, von Mises, Hayek, Lange, Roemer |
| JEL: | P20 P21 P27 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:89521&r=hpe |
| By: | Arthur Mustafin (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This article is devoted to a reconstruction of Soviet discussions on long cycles based on an analysis of a wide range of unknown and little-known historiographical sources and archival materials. The role of discussions in the formation of assessments and ideas about long cycles is shown. In particular, we show that the controversy between Kondratiev and Gosplan about the economic development of the USSR had a noticeable effect on the negative evaluation of Kondratiev’s method for identifying long cycles. The study defines the relations between Kondratiev’s views on the problem of long cycles and his probabilistic-statistical approach to the analysis of society. |
| Keywords: | long waves, Kondratiev cycles, capitalism's crisis, the Conjuncture Institute, random events, criteria of refutation, teleological method, genetic method. |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:168/hum/2018&r=hpe |
| By: | Quentin Couix (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | Despite his early contribution to the rise of mathematics in economics, Georgescu-Roegen's later methodological criticism of models has received little attention from historians and philosophers of economics. This paper attempts to fill this gap following two lines. First, I examine his explicitly methodological claims and connect them with related topics in economic methodology. Building on the distinction between dialectical and arithmomorphic concepts, I characterise his approach to theory-making as a three steps process of idealisation, isolation and arithmetisation. In this framework, models perform two functions, checking for logical consistency and facilitating understanding, which can be related to the idea of modelling as theorising. I then confront these general principles with Georgescu-Roegen's flow-fund model of production. I use the methodology as a reading grid of this theory, while examining its limits and complementary principles in practice. This shows a great deal of consistency, where idealisation provides conceptual foundations, isolation determines the relevant problems, and models are built according to structural consistency. The two functions of models are then illustrated by the logical derivation of older principles formulated by Babbage and Smith, and the understanding of the different organisational patterns of production. But some slightly different functions also appear when specific configurations of the model enable to check the conceptual consistency of other theories, or the understanding provided by the model contributes to the formation of new concepts. Hence, the consistency and the complementarity between Georgescu-Roegen's methodology and practice of theory-making provide interesting insights and a useful background for further investigations |
| Keywords: | Georgescu-Roegen; methodology; philosophy; models; flow-fund; production function; input-output; substitution |
| JEL: | B16 B31 B41 C02 C65 D24 E23 O10 |
| Date: | 2018–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:18021&r=hpe |
| By: | Fernando Salazar Silva; Alba Liliana Cuaspud Cáliz |
| Keywords: | Firma; mercado; conocimiento disperso; precios; costos de transacción. Firm; market; knowledge dispersed; prices; transaction costs |
| JEL: | B2 B25 D21 D23 D80 |
| Date: | 2017–07–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000418:016773&r=hpe |
| By: | Agnès Festré (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we argue that Hayek's approach to expectations can be better understood if one takes into account the interplay between two related complex evolving systems: the cognitive system and the system of behavioural rules of action. The interplay between these two systems involves both positive and negative feedback mechanisms so that an individual system of rules can produce higher order regularities that preserve their existence over time. Our contribution complements existing work on Hayek's cognitive theory by providing insights on how Hayek's approach to expectations can inform modern behavioural economics. |
| Keywords: | Hayek, emergence, knowledge, expectations |
| JEL: | B25 B4 B53 D84 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2018-28&r=hpe |
| By: | Alexandre Mendes Cunha (Cedeplar-UFMG) |
| Abstract: | Although seldom remembered in this respect, François Perroux exerted direct and indirect influence on the debate on European integration in the immediate post-war period in France. The theme of European integration serves in Perroux’s work as a concrete case study on which a series of his recurrent themes could be explored, such as his theory of domination, his reflection on economic spaces, development and the costs of man ("coûts de l’homme"), or even as an extension of topics from his work in the 1930s related to corporatism and communitarianism. Perroux deals with the theme of European integration fundamentally in an extensive book from 1954, L’Europe sans rivages, but also in several others of his books and articles from the period, forming a complex and multifaceted analysis of the problematic that, nevertheless, insists in a central message: the importance of the global aspect of the European integration, thinking in a Europe of the “five parts of the world”. This paper offers an analysis of this set of writings, connecting it to the institutional and political context of the debate on European integration in France. The goal is to situate the effective influence Perroux’s ideas and his concrete personal influence on important names of Jean Monnet entourage. Taking these general questions as a reference, and starting with Perroux’s perspectives on topics such as national accounts, planning and liberal interventionism, the article also explores the critical thinking undertaken by Perroux, throughout the 1950s, on the institutional and political paths taken in the first years of the European integration process, approximating his analysis to other voices that critically discussed those paths, such as, for example, Gunnar Myrdal. Doing this, the paper also explores important connections, not frequently visited in the literature of the history of economic ideas, between the European integration and the field of economic development or regarding the debates on regional inequalities that took shape in the midst of the postwar European reconstruction projects. |
| Keywords: | François Perroux, Jean Monnet, European integration, Postwar Europe, National accounts, planning, liberal interventionism. |
| JEL: | B29 B31 B59 F02 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdp:texdis:td590&r=hpe |
| By: | Joseph Hodara |
| Keywords: | Miguel Wionczek; Polonia; Segunda Guerra Mundial; México. Miguel Wionczek; Poland; Second World War; Mexico. |
| Date: | 2018–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000418:016775&r=hpe |
| By: | Fahd Boundi Chraki |
| Keywords: | Valor; precios de producción; transformación; invariante; iteración. Value; prices of production; transformation; invariant; iterative method |
| JEL: | B14 B24 B51 |
| Date: | 2018–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000418:016779&r=hpe |
| By: | Chulyoung Kim (Yonsei University); Sang-Hyun Kim (Yonsei University) |
| Abstract: | Andreoni and Bernheim (2009) considers a variant of the dictator game in which an exogenous force, called "nature", overturns the dictator's decision with some known probability. They find that as the likelihood of nature's intervention increased, more subjects mimicked the nature's move. We replicate their experiment, and examine a new treatment in which the dictator's decision is revealed to the recipient even when the dictator mimics nature's move. We find that (i) many dictators' decisions were affected by nature's intervention even when their choice was observed by the recipient, which suggests that the intervention altered not only the incentive to signal one's fair-mindedness but also the perception of appropriate action, but (ii) still dictators' behavior under the two treatments differed significantly, which suggests that the audience effect also matters greatly in AB's and our experiments. |
| Keywords: | Social image, Social norm, Dictator game, Altruism |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yon:wpaper:2018rwp-134&r=hpe |
| By: | Bomze, Immanuel; Schachinger, Werner; Weibull, Jorgen |
| Abstract: | Some finite and symmetric two-player games have no (pure or mixed) symmetric Nash equilibrium when played by partly morally motivated players. The reason is that the "right thing to do" may be not to randomize. We analyze this issue both under complete information between equally moral players and under incomplete information between arbitrarily moral players. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibrium and illustrate the results with examples and counter-examples. |
| Keywords: | Nash equilibrium, morality, homo moralis, social preferences, incomplete information |
| JEL: | C72 D01 D64 D82 D91 |
| Date: | 2018–10–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:89555&r=hpe |
| By: | Chadha, Jagjit S. |
| Abstract: | We consider the role of money as a means of payment, store of value and medium of exchange. I outline a number of quantitative and qualitative experiences of monetary management. Successful regimes have sprung up in a variety of surprising places, and been sustained with state (centralised) interventions. Although the link between state and money, and its standard of identity and account may be clear, particularly in earlier stages of economic development, the extent to which the state is widely felt to hold responsibility for 'sound money' is less clear in modern democracies, where there are many other public responsibilities implying ongoing trade-offs. |
| Keywords: | money; gold standard; paper money; Samuelson. |
| JEL: | B22 E31 |
| Date: | 2018–07–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:90379&r=hpe |
| By: | Jie Ding; Vahid Tarokh; Yuhong Yang |
| Abstract: | In the era of big data, analysts usually explore various statistical models or machine learning methods for observed data in order to facilitate scientific discoveries or gain predictive power. Whatever data and fitting procedures are employed, a crucial step is to select the most appropriate model or method from a set of candidates. Model selection is a key ingredient in data analysis for reliable and reproducible statistical inference or prediction, and thus central to scientific studies in fields such as ecology, economics, engineering, finance, political science, biology, and epidemiology. There has been a long history of model selection techniques that arise from researches in statistics, information theory, and signal processing. A considerable number of methods have been proposed, following different philosophies and exhibiting varying performances. The purpose of this article is to bring a comprehensive overview of them, in terms of their motivation, large sample performance, and applicability. We provide integrated and practically relevant discussions on theoretical properties of state-of- the-art model selection approaches. We also share our thoughts on some controversial views on the practice of model selection. |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1810.09583&r=hpe |
| By: | Björn Bartling; Ernst Fehr; David Huffman; Nick Netzer |
| Abstract: | Trust affects almost all human relationships – in families, organizations, markets and politics. However, identifying the conditions under which trust, defined as people's beliefs in the trustworthiness of others, has a causal effect on the efficiency of human interactions has proven to be difficult. We show experimentally and theoretically that trust indeed has a causal effect. The duration of the effect depends, however, on whether initial trust variations are supported by multiple equilibria. We study a repeated principal-agent game with multiple equilibria and document empirically that an efficient equilibrium is selected if principals believe that agents are trustworthy, while players coordinate on an inefficient equilibrium if principals believe that agents are untrustworthy. Yet, if we change the institutional environment such that there is a unique equilibrium, initial variations in trust have short-run effects only. Moreover, if we weaken contract enforcement in the latter environment, exogenous variations in trust do not even have a short-run effect. The institutional environment thus appears to be key for whether trust has causal effects and whether the effects are transient or persistent. |
| Keywords: | Trust, causality, equilibrium selection, belief distortions, incomplete contracts, screening, institutions |
| JEL: | C91 D02 D91 E02 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:304&r=hpe |
| By: | Vernon L. Smith (Economic Science Institute, Chapman University) |
| Keywords: | Experimental Economics, History of Economic Thought |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:18-11&r=hpe |
| By: | Gabriele Camera; Alessandro Gioffré |
| Abstract: | The theory of repeated games asserts that, when past conduct is unobservable, patient individuals can attain the efficient outcome if cooperators suffer large losses to defectors, and react by forever defecting. This extreme "grim" punishment is, in fact, counterproductive when losses are small, as it prevents cooperation among patient players. Here we show how to resolve this non-existence problem. A class of moderate punishments exists, which support full cooperation independent of the size of losses to defectors. Our theory provides a rationale for the empirical observation that grim punishment is uncommon in laboratory studies of cooperation. |
| Keywords: | prisoner’s dilemma, random matching, social norms. |
| JEL: | E4 E5 C7 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2018_12.rdf&r=hpe |
| By: | Kiril Dimitrov |
| Abstract: | This article outlines different stages in development of the national culture model, created by Geert Hofstede and his affiliates. This paper reveals and synthesizes the contemporary review of the application spheres of this framework. Numerous applications of the dimensions set are used as a source of identifying significant critiques, concerning different aspects in model's operation. These critiques are classified and their underlying reasons are also outlined by means of a fishbone diagram. |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1810.02621&r=hpe |
| By: | Virgile Chassagnon (CREG - Centre de recherche en économie de Grenoble - UPMF - Université Pierre Mendès France - Grenoble 2 - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes) |
| Abstract: | L'argumentation de cet essai se développe en quatre temps. Tout d'abord, une analyse des maux actuels de notre société est proposée à l'aune des grands enjeux contemporains. Est ensuite questionnée la nature du capitalisme afin de circonscrire son pouvoir de résilience et ses capacités de transformation. Un détour par la pensée humaniste progressiste du siècle dernier est alors suggéré afin de mieux réinterroger les fondements d'un capitalisme raisonnable et juste. Puis l'argumentation se fige sur le coeur de l'essai : le rôle de l'entreprise comme "bien commun" dans la création d'un agir démocratique qui servirait le vivre-ensemble dans la Cité. L'essai se termine par l'énoncé argumenté de recommandations et de pistes de progrès institutionnels et sociaux à destination des décideurs politiques et des acteurs économiques. |
| Keywords: | entreprise,bien commun,capitalisme,démocratie,crise,justice sociale |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01896980&r=hpe |
| By: | Matthias Sutter; Juergen Huber; Michael Kirchler; Matthias Stefan; Markus Walzl |
| Abstract: | There is a heated debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. However, it is a challenging task to identify and measure moral behavior in markets. Based on a theoretical model, we examine in an experiment the relation between trading volume, prices and moral behavior by setting up markets that either impose a negative externality on third parties or not. We find that moral behavior reveals itself in lower trading volume in markets with an externality, and in prices depending on the market structure. We further investigate individual characteristics that explain trading behavior in markets with externalities. |
| Keywords: | Morals, Markets, Competition, Experiment |
| JEL: | C92 D03 D62 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2018-18&r=hpe |