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on Heterodox Microeconomics |
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Issue of 2024‒07‒22
six papers chosen by Carlo D’Ippoliti, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Innes, Abby |
| Abstract: | In After Neoliberalism Michael Jacobs makes a compelling case for the systematic failures of neoliberal economic policies and in the neoclassical theories that justified them. He calls for an economics rooted in ontological institutionalism and for the (re)development of varied institutions charged with diverse social purposes. This response takes Jacobs’ critique further and states that neoliberalism fails because the neoclassical economics that underpins it is fundamentally utopian; and it is doomed to fail for the same ontological and epistemological reasons that condemned Soviet socialism. What these politically opposed doctrines hold in common is closed-system economic reasoning from axiomatic deduction presented as ‘a governing science’. It follows that both must tend to fail on contact with a three-dimensional reality in an always evolving, open-system world, subject to Knightian uncertainty. The dark historical joke is that a machine models of the economy, both Soviet and neoclassical neoliberal economics, converge on the same statecraft of quantification, output-planning, target-setting, forecasting and the presumption of only ‘rational’—socially productive—firms. The result in both systems is state and economic failure and the creation of production regimes that are a grotesque caricature of those promised, only now in the midst of an ecological emergency. It follows that we need an urgent revival of analytical pluralism in government and a non-utopian scientific realism about the true scope of the ecological crisis, so that Jacobs’ rich institutional ecosystem will have resilient foundations. |
| Keywords: | neoclassical economics; neoliberal policy; polycrisis; Soviet economics; utopia; Wiley deal |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2024–05–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:123741&r= |
| By: | Bhanjdeo, Arundhita |
| Abstract: | Over the last decade in India, farmer producer organizations (FPOs) have emerged as a means of collectivizing smallholder farmers and providing them access to extension, innovation, and market services. FPOs that center women farmers, traditionally at a disadvantage vis-Ã -vis their male counterparts in access to resources and extension, can serve to enhance women’s agency and collective action in agricultural value chains. We used 59 key informant interviews and nine focus group discussions to examine the constraints to, and facilitators of, women’s and men’s participation in three women-only FPOs in Jharkhand, an eastern Indian state. Additionally, we study the gender and power dynamics in such FPOs and the potential of collective efficacy to enhance agricultural and empowerment outcomes. The FPO intervention we evaluated was supported by an NGO that provides FPO members with both agricultural and gender-based inputs to improve agronomic practices, market linkages, agricultural yields and profits, and the role of women both within the FPO and within their households and communities. In this paper, we provide contextual insights on ‘what works’ to empower women in this context. Women’s perceptions of the benefits from FPO membership were heterogeneous. Our qualitative analysis suggests a nuanced picture of women’s autonomy and decision-making within and outside their household, further shaped by women’s and men’s perception of shifts in women’s access to resources and services. The emerging lessons provide inputs for development implementers and policymakers to recognize diverse contextual barriers in designing FPO interventions to enable and enhance women empowerment outcomes. The research also contributes to the body of knowledge on local gender norms and understanding of empowerment. |
| Keywords: | agricultural value chains; collectivization; extension; gender; innovation; women’s empowerment; India; Asia; Southern Asia |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:2259&r= |
| By: | Zhouzhou Gu; Mathieu Lauri\`ere; Sebastian Merkel; Jonathan Payne |
| Abstract: | We propose and compare new global solution algorithms for continuous time heterogeneous agent economies with aggregate shocks. First, we approximate the agent distribution so that equilibrium in the economy can be characterized by a high, but finite, dimensional non-linear partial differential equation. We consider different approximations: discretizing the number of agents, discretizing the agent state variables, and projecting the distribution onto a finite set of basis functions. Second, we represent the value function using a neural network and train it to solve the differential equation using deep learning tools. We refer to the solution as an Economic Model Informed Neural Network (EMINN). The main advantage of this technique is that it allows us to find global solutions to high dimensional, non-linear problems. We demonstrate our algorithm by solving important models in the macroeconomics and spatial literatures (e.g. Krusell and Smith (1998), Khan and Thomas (2007), Bilal (2023)). |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2406.13726&r= |
| By: | Frasser, Cristian; Guzmán, Gabriel |
| Abstract: | The standard strategy involves evaluating whether economic classifications meet criteria derived from a general theory of natural kinds. The first objective of this article is to show the implementation of this strategy by various relevant authors. We argue that the standard strategy has failed due to its lack of a greater sensitivity to the role played by human interests in the design of different types of natural kinds. The second objective is to outline a new strategy for investigating economic classifications. Our departure from the standard strategy can be described as a shift from assessing economic classifications based on general theories of natural kinds to examining specific cases with the aim of theorizing about their design and application. The cases of the cost-of-living index and race are used to succinctly discuss the objectivity of economic classifications and implications for the relationship between science and democracy. |
| Keywords: | natural kinds, economic classifications, essences, objectivity, science and democracy. |
| JEL: | B25 B4 B40 B50 |
| Date: | 2024–05–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:121166&r= |
| By: | Pijpers, Kevin |
| Abstract: | The Urban Living Lab (ULL) is an aspirational device to materialize practices designed around co- production, participation, and transformation in the public arena. It is a research approach that emphasizes short-lived in-situ collaborations purified from the wider ex-situ political and social reality. This approach can strengthen epistemic trust injustices and harms by enforcing an overbearing mode of consensus-seeking participation around dominant epistemic regimes. This paper formulates an alternative, speculative realist approach to the ULL and analyses an ethnographic vignette to explore the intricacies, ambiguities, and disagreements within a post- pandemic ULL-situation in a community playground in Rotterdam South. Through these analyses, this paper takes inventory of matters of care in this stigmatized territory to show how an ULL might be done if it is to generate epistemic justice and social transformation. |
| Date: | 2024–06–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:rh6fc&r= |
| By: | Rozi Kumari (Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University); Rupayan Pal (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research) |
| Abstract: | Level playing field for women to participate in decision making and leadership positions is key to progress of a nation. Analysing widely used nationally representative datasets from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES), we document that women ownership and participation in top management of registered private firms in India has drastically decreased, from low to a very meagre level, during the period from 2014 to 2022, despite sustained GDP growth and launch of several government programs to promote entrepreneurship. The pattern of decline is consistent across sectors (manufacturing and services) and size-groups (small, medium, and large) of firms, barring some variations. This is true regardless of the measure of women ownership considered and is not due to entry and exit of firms. |
| Keywords: | Firm ownership, Women, Private registered firms, Decision rights, Leadership, Entrepreneur |
| JEL: | O10 G32 J54 L26 B54 |
| Date: | 2024–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2024-008&r= |