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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2017‒03‒12
fifteen papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Hanappi, Hardy |
| Abstract: | The capitalist mode of production has fulfilled a most astonishing ‘historical mission’ for the human species. It enabled an explosion of labor productivity gains and the discovery of new utility dimensions. But this progress came at the price of accompanying explosion of contradictions, of unequal benefits and burdens across global and local classes of humans. This paper sets out to explore what will happen if capitalism is finally ending, if its mission collapses. To do so a workable definition of the essence of capitalism is needed, I propose this to be the ‘capitalist algorithm’ – for a detailed treatment see [Hanappi, 2013]. The most interesting question then concerns the social mechanisms that might overcome – revolutionize – what currently dominates the behavior of large production conglomerates as well as their military arms on a global level. Following the tradition of Hegel and Marx it can be assumed that a large part of the capitalist algorithm simply will have to vanish. But as history shows there also always is a remainder of a mode of production that in an inverted form (Hegel: negation, German Marxism: ‘Umstülpung’) becomes part of the next progressive mode of production. To identify what ‘Capital after Capitalism’ could be, what has to be abolished and what might survive in which form – remember the double meaning of Hegel’s concept ‘Aufhebung’ – is a central prerequisite for a proper understanding of the coming revolution of the current mode of production. Since each step on the ladder of global social evolution is also a step in social human consciousness, this step in understanding implies a direct impact in guiding the actions to accomplish this turnover. |
| Keywords: | Capitalism, Utopia, Political Economy, Mode of Production |
| JEL: | B00 B59 N10 P16 |
| Date: | 2016–11–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:77161&r=hme |
| By: | Johannes Preiser-Kapeller |
| Abstract: | Based on the assumption that economic complexity is characterised by the interactions of economic agents (who) constantly change their actions and strategies in response to the outcome they mutually create, this paper presents how network models can be used a proxies for the mapping, quantification and analysis of Roman economic complexity. Network analysis provides tools to visualise and analyse the inherent complexity of various types of data and their combination (archaeological, geographical, textual) or even of a single piece of evidence. Equally, the relational approach invites to a structural and quantitative comparison between periods, regions and the economic systems of polities and empires. An increasing number of proxies of this kind may allow us to capture the trajectories of economic complexity beyond metaphors. |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1703.02865&r=hme |
| By: | Cem Baslevent (Istanbul Bilgi University and ERF) |
| Abstract: | The main purpose of this project is to carry out descriptive analyses to determine the extent to which social transfers and pension payments have an impact on income inequality and the incidence of poverty in Turkey. Our survey data allows us to carry out this research by identifying the amounts of various types of income received by households. Furthermore, the availability of the amounts of labor income and pension payments at the individual level allows us to distinguish between the incomes of male and female household members, which makes it possible to examine some gendered dimensions of the research question. Thus, the examination of the distributional impact of pension and social assistance programs in Turkey promises to be an interesting exercise that will provide valuable insights for not only for social scientists, but also for politicians and policy makers. Pension payments received by female household members reflect a strong attachment to the labor market in the past. Thus, our findings might also point to the importance of the continued economic activity of women in terms of social justice. Also, by quantifying the contribution of social transfers to inequality, we might produce concrete empirical evidence of whether social policies of the government have had an impact on political outcomes. |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1013&r=hme |
| By: | Kemp-Benedict, Eric |
| Abstract: | In recent decades, firms have been seen to “delayer” and shrink middle management. We show in this paper that changes in management structure affect income distribution within the firm. The managerial wage bill follows from an accounting relationship that depends on the manager’s span of control and step increases in managerial pay. Holding those factors fixed, CEO pay is found to increase with the size of the firm, thereby reproducing one of the best-documented observations of firm compensation. Also, the contribution of within-firm wage inequality as measured by the Theil index is found to be of the same order of magnitude as between-sector inequality. When the span of control rises, as it has in recent decades, wage and salary inequality declines. We argue that the well-documented rise in income inequality is a result of rapidly expanding equity-based compensation. Following traditions in economics that propose a social basis for income distribution, the paper argues that changing the span of control and step changes in pay between levels in the managerial hierarchy, as well as the profit share, are factors through which upper management, middle management and production workers can negotiate their slice of the pie. |
| Keywords: | delayering; downsizing; financialization; functional income distribution; span of control |
| JEL: | D33 L22 |
| Date: | 2015–05–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:77072&r=hme |
| By: | Diane Perrons |
| Abstract: | Economic geography, at its best, deploys economic and social theory to make sense of the economic, political and social transformation of regions and their impact on people’s lives and opportunities. Nowhere is this approach more evident than in the work of Ray Hudson, who has consistently focused on analysing the processes of combined and uneven development to explain the broad changes in the capitalist economy together with middle-level theories to account for the complexity of regional development in practice. In so doing he has created a powerful Geographical Political Economy that provides a deep understanding of the last four decades of economic restructuring and industrial transformation of the North-East Region of England and its impact on the lives of people living there. This article reflects on this aspect of Ray Hudson’s work in the context of his broader contributions to the academy. |
| Keywords: | Economic geography; space; place; social theory |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2017–01–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:69672&r=hme |
| By: | Pascal Seppecher (Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord (CEPN)); Isabelle Salle (Utrecht University, School of Economics); Marc Lavoie (Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord (CEPN)) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies coordination between firms in a multi-sectoral macroeconomic model with endogenous business cycles. Firms are both in competition and interdependent, and set their prices with a markup over unit costs. Markups are heterogeneous and evolve under market pressure. We observe a systematic coordination within firms in each sector, and between each sector. The resulting pattern of relative prices are consistent with the labor theory of value. Those emerging features are robust to technology shocks. |
| Keywords: | General interdependence, Pricing, Agent-based modeling, Learning |
| Date: | 2017–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upn:wpaper:2017-03&r=hme |
| By: | Xieshu Wang |
| Abstract: | Investments by funds in the equity of non listed companies represent a particular activity of capitalism of the 21st Century. This study provides an analysis of the development and the characteristics of private equity funds operating in China. It applies the framework of institutional theory using a multi-disciplinary approach and compare Chinese, French and British funds. Our analysis suggests that private equity in China is characterized by a stronger influence of the Chinese state, an extensive impact of guanxi, a more diverse use of information sources, a more limited choice of financial tools and the preference of Chinese entrepreneurs to keep control of their firms. Our econometric study also indicates that the rigidity of labor market, economic openness and taxation on company profits have the greatest impact on the activity of all funds. In comparison with France, the UK and the US, China has stronger coefficients regarding GDP growth, household consumption growth, political stability and infrastructure. |
| Keywords: | Private equity, China, Europe |
| Date: | 2016–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upn:wpaper:2016-11&r=hme |
| By: | Izak Atiyas (Sabanci University); Ozan Bakis; Esra Ceviker Gurakar |
| Abstract: | It has widely been asserted that an important dimension of social dynamics that eventually carried the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) to political power is the emergence of a “devout bourgeoisie” especially in the new growth centers of Anatolia. In this paper, we use firm level data over the last three decades to trace the economic and especially productivity dynamics in the manufacturing industries of new growth centers in Anatolia (“Anatolian Tigers”) in comparison to the traditional growth centers (the “West”). We observe that what happened in the 1990s in the Tigers was a significant change in the size distribution of employment with the emergence of a significant number of medium sized enterprises. In the 2000s there was a visible convergence between the labor productivity of highly productive firms in the Tigers and the West, whereas divergence occurred at the lower end of the productivity distribution. We then examine the evolution of members of religious business associations among the largest 1000 manufacturing firms in Turkey. We observe that the number of such firms increased substantially especially after mid-1990s. These firms are concentrated in relatively more labor-intensive industries, and have lower productivity than firms associated with business associations that represent the traditional industrial elite and are quite export oriented. We discuss the possible role of political connections and conclude they possibly had a more diminished role in the emergence of devout businesses in manufacturing compared to rent-thick activities such as public procurement, construction or regulated industries. |
| Date: | 2016–11–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1064&r=hme |
| By: | Kis-Katos, Krisztina (University of Goettingen); Pieters, Janneke (Wageningen University); Sparrow, Robert (Wageningen University) |
| Abstract: | We analyse the gender-specific effects of trade liberalization on work participation and hours of work and primary participation in domestic duties in Indonesia. We show that female work participation increased in relative terms in regions that were more exposed to input tariff reductions, whereas the effects of output tariff changes were much less pronounced. When looking at the potential channels for these effects, we find that in Indonesia the structure of initial protection was considerably more female-biased than skill-biased and hence reductions in input tariffs have especially benefited sectors with a larger initial concentration of female workers. This has led to a relative expansion of more female intensive sectors as well as to a decrease in gender segregation of occupation, especially among the low skilled. We also find that labour markets are a key channel through which trade liberalization affects marriage decisions. Delayed marriage among both sexes is related to input tariff liberalization, especially in the younger cohorts, as the improved labour opportunities for women reduce the returns to marriage. |
| Keywords: | labour force participation, gender inequality, marriage, trade liberalization, Indonesia |
| JEL: | F13 F16 J12 J16 J21 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10552&r=hme |
| By: | Steffen Hertog (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that capitalism in Arab low- to mid-income countries is organized in a distinct and recognizable pattern. The key stylized facts are: a stretched, over-committed and interventionist state; deep insider-outsider divides in private sectors and labor markets resulting from lopsided state intervention; and low levels of cooperation and trust between state, business and workers. These features produce an equilibrium of low skills and low productivity that hampers private-driven growth in the region. Some fundamental parts of this story apply to underdeveloped economies in general, notably low government capacity and a segmentation of business and labor into formal and informal markets. Others, however, are regionally specific, including the relative importance and historical ambition of the state in the economy and, closely related, the relative size of the insider coalitions created through government employment and subsidies. Unusually rigid insider-outsider divisions are cemented by a particularly pronounced weakness of universal social security and safety mechanisms. As a result of uneven government intervention and market segmentation, trust and cooperation between state, business and labor are even lower than elsewhere, both on the individual and the organizational levels. Arab cronyism needs to be understood as a key feature of this larger complex of deep state intervention and rigid insider-outsider boundaries. The paper helps explain why cronyism has been so hard to eradicate, but also points to potential structural reforms that could contribute to reducing its incidence. |
| Date: | 2016–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1068&r=hme |
| By: | Blackwell, Timothy; Kohl, Sebastian |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we argue that the complexion of housing finance systems in OECD countries, both now and historically, has a significant bearing on a number of core housing-related indicators, including housing form, tenure composition, and urban development. Existing literature in the fields of housing studies and comparative political economy, however, has often neglected the historical dynamics of housing finance, while contemporaneously, financial historians have focused almost exclusively on company and not mortgage finance. We identify four different "ideal types" of housing finance systems that developed in mature capitalist economies when organized housing finance institutions began to emerge throughout the long nineteenth century: informal person-to-person lending and state lending as solutions outside specialized banking circuits, and deposit-based and bond-based institutions as banking solutions. We adapt Alexander Gerschenkron's theory of economic backwardness in order to explain the temporal-spatial emergence of these distinct types. We draw a path-dependent conclusion, noting that the more countries developed bond-based mortgage banks in the nineteenth century, the more they tended towards multi-story building structure, low homeownership rates and lower securitization levels in the twentieth century. A collection of unique historical city and country data supports these findings. |
| Keywords: | housing finance,homeownership,building form,urbanization,Gerschenkron,path dependence,financial history,mortgage banks,building societies,buildings and loans,Hausfinanz,Wohneigentum,Bauform,Urbanisierung,Gerschenkron,Pfadabhängigkeit,Finanzgeschichte,Hypothekenbanken,Bausparkassen |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:172&r=hme |
| By: | Hirsch, Barry (Georgia State University); Macpherson, David A. (Trinity University); Preston, Anne E. (Haverford College) |
| Abstract: | The nonprofit sector's share of wage and salary employment in the U.S. has increased over time, from about 5½ percent in the mid-1990s to 7 percent in 2015. This paper surveys the literature and presents new evidence on the employment and earnings of workers in the nonprofit sector since 1994. As compared to the private for-profit sector, nonprofits have a more educated and older workforce, with employment concentrated in health, education, and service occupations and industries. Standard wage level analysis indicates lower wages for men employed in nonprofits compared to male for-profit workers with similar measured attributes. No such penalty is found for women. Based on panel estimates of wage changes, we find no substantive wage penalties for either women or men moving between jobs in and outside the nonprofit sector. We conclude that wages in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, on average, differ little for similar workers and jobs. |
| Keywords: | nonprofit wage differentials, nonprofit employment, Current Population Survey (CPS) |
| JEL: | J21 J31 L33 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10571&r=hme |
| By: | Andres Gomez-Lievano (Center for International Development at Harvard University); Oscar Patterson-Loomba (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health); Ricardo Hausmann (Center for International Development at Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | The prevalence of many urban phenomena changes systematically with population size. We propose a theory that unifies models of economic complexity, and cultural evolution to derive urban scaling. The theory accounts for the difference in scaling exponents and average prevalence across phenomena, as well as the difference in the variance within phenomena across cities of similar size. The central ideas are that a number of necessary complementary factors must be simultaneously present for a phenomenon to occur, and that the diversity of factors is logarithmically related to population size. The model reveals that phenomena that require more factors will be less prevalent, scale more superlinearly and show larger variance across cities of similar size. The theory applies to data on education, employment, innovation, disease and crime, and it entails the ability to predict the prevalence of a phenomenon across cities, given information about the prevalence in a single city. |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cid:wpfacu:329&r=hme |
| By: | Martínez-Lagunes, Ricardo |
| Abstract: | O presente documento constitui uma síntese muito sucinta do estado da arte em matéria de Contas Econômicas Ambientais da Água, também denominadas Contas da Água, com ênfase na aplicação para a América Latina e especificamente para o caso do Brasil. Este documento se fundamentou nas apresentações e debates ocorridos durante o Seminário: “Contas Econômicas Ambientais da Água como Subsídio para as Políticas Públicas e o Monitoramento dos Objetivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável”, realizado em 26 e 27 de novembro de 2014 no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, no âmbito da Jornada dos Objetivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável realizada pelo Ministério do Meio Ambiente (MMA). |
| Keywords: | AGUA, RECURSOS HIDRICOS, ORDENAMIENTO DE LAS AGUAS, CUENTAS NACIONALES, CONTABILIDAD AMBIENTAL, ESTUDIOS DE CASOS, DESARROLLO SOSTENIBLE, WATER, WATER RESOURCES, WATER MANAGEMENT, NATIONAL ACCOUNTS, ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTING, CASE STUDIES, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecr:col022:40990&r=hme |
| By: | Jung, Benjamin; Kohler, Wilhelm |
| Abstract: | How do input-output linkages modify countries' incentives to conduct commercial policies? We address this question in a version of the Melitz (2003) model where the production-side of the economy is enriched by input-output linkages. The bundle of intermediate inputs used in production in addition to labor is a composite good governed by the same CES aggregator as the final good. Cooperative policies correct for an input distortion generated by the fact that firms' markups translate into the price of the composite good. In the analysis of non-cooperative trade policy, the input distortion stemming from domestic markups counteracts the standard terms-of-trade externality, resulting in a lower optimal tariff and potentially an optimal import subsidy. |
| JEL: | F12 F13 D60 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145833&r=hme |