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There have been significant changes in what economists include in the category of investment over the last six decades. The US government agency that compiles national income date, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, has tried to keep up with these changes, but it has not succeeded. The resulting tension between economic theory and official data can be overcome by adopting a different theoretical lens. Work on social reproduction and social investment suggests a more coherent definition of investment than that offered by mainstream economists. The paper then contrasts the measurement of investment in the government data with a calculation of investment derived from this new approach. The results show that business investment is dwarfed by the combined investment made by government and households. This finding suggests that business investment is not the key engine that powers the economy. This has significant implications for economic and social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay revisits an earlier article, published in 2008, that argued that the United States had created a "hidden developmental state" that helped move technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace. In the intervening fifteen years, this apparatus has become more elaborate with ever more government initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels. Moreover, the major pieces of legislation passed in the first two years of the Biden administration have added considerable new funding. Nevertheless, this set of programs has not yet become a part of political debates outside of the federal government. It remains hidden to most of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need for a new economic paradigm that recognizes the shift towards a "habitation economy" characterized by non-standardized goods and services. Topics include the importance of democratic control, expanding public and nonprofit provision of goods and services, and global reforms to address issues such as climate change and tax havens.

The US government's expanding role in assisting businesses with the development of new technologies has significantly increased corporate dependence on the state. This dependence creates new opportunities for social movements to extract significant concessions from capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The online version of the original article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09534-3.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-023-09534-3This paper was inadvertently published containing a mistake.On the third line of the last page of this paper, there is a reference to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2002. This should be 2022.Springer wishes to apologize for any inconvenience caused.Publisher's NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.By Fred BlockReported by Author [Extracted from the article]

As dynamic collaborations between networks of specialists have become more central to developing cutting‐edge innovations, designing and sustaining innovation policies that foster them has become an increasingly central concern. This article reviews the characteristics of the "developmental network" or "neo‐developmental" states that have been shown to foster innovations at the technological horizon. It then analyzes the US case to suggest why some developmental network approaches to governance have proven relatively durable, while others have not. We conclude with a discussion of what can – and cannot – be learned from the US case, and suggest the importance of comparative work on the sustainability of effective innovation‐centered approaches to governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic analysts have used trends in total factor productivity (TFP) to evaluate the effectiveness with which economies are utilizing advances in technology. However, this measure is problematic on several different dimensions. First, the idea that it is possible to separate out the relative contribution to economic output of labor, capital, and technology requires ignoring their complex interdependence in actual production. Second, since TFP growth has declined in recent decades in all of the developed market societies, there is good reason to believe that the decline is an artifact of the slower rates of economic growth that are linked to austerity policies. Third, reliance on TFP assumes that measures of the gross domestic product are accurately capturing changes in economic output, even as the portion of the labor force producing tangible goods has declined substantially. Finally, there are other indicators that suggest that current rates of technological progress might be as strong or stronger than in earlier decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hannes Lacher's article (2019) misrepresents and then denounces both the substance and the spirit of our book, The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique (2014). Lacher claims his interpretation of Polanyi to be the only acceptable one, and vociferously alerts readers to beware the dangerous influence of our work. Because we continue to believe that familiarity with Polanyi's theoretical framework is valuable for those resisting the depredations of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, we restate our commitment to interpreting Polanyi's work in the most capacious way possible, treating it not as Scripture but as a body of work multidimensional enough for varying perspectives. In our reply to Lacher, we revisit several themes central to our book, including Polanyi's complex use of "utopianism"; the "always-instituted economy"; the gold standard's attack on the "democratic virus" and the rise of fascism; and Polanyi's socialist commitment to democratizing the economy. We also suggest that by exploring several apparent puzzles in the text of GT it is possible to derive a more fruitful and powerful interpretation of Polanyi's thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economic consequences of growing wealth inequality. Topics include U.S. government data shows that through the Great Recession, personal saving in the U.S. had been trending steadily downward and this downturn was often cited to justify tax cuts for high-income households, U.S.-based firms have a strong incentive to credit as much of their overseas profits as possible to subsidiaries in places with low rates of taxation on corporate profits, and leak of data from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network documents the enormous scale of illicit transactions.

This essay introduces a special issue of Politics & Society in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019), outlines nine characteristics of a future socialism. It elaborates socialism as a set of processes and institutional arrangements that would open the way to a society that is radically more democratic, more just, and more sustainable than the existing order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

>The concept of network failure has great value in making sense of the role that government officials now play in the process of developing and commercializing new technologies. Network failure was rarely an issue in the era that was dominated by giant, multi-divisional firms that controlled all stages of the production process. Today, however, the innovation process as well as the development and production of new products typically require collaborations among multiple entities. Automobile production, for example, now involves complex chains of specialized subcontracting firms. This creates the risk that firms will not be able to find the competent and trustworthy network partners that they need. US policy makers are aware of this issue, and they have been self-conscious about the process of creating new institutions that replicate the strength of the kinds of industrial districts described by Alfred Marshall. Their most recent initiative—the creation of advanced manufacturing institutes—has been structured to help firms find the competent and trustworthy partners that they need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, there has been little agreement between advocates of radical financial reform and socialist theoreticians. However, in the new circumstances of the twenty-first century, a productive synthesis of these two traditions might be possible. Drawing on the franchise model of credit creation elaborated by Robert C. Hockett and the dysfunctions created by the extreme concentration of private financial institutions, this article outlines a reform agenda that would both democratize finance and facilitate the flow of funds into valuable forms of investment that are currently starved for resources. If the new institutions envisioned in this proposal were able to take root and expand, they could ultimately facilitate a transition to socialism, defined as the subordination of the market to democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the articles and commentaries in the special issue titled "Democratizing Finance." Here, the term "democratizing finance" focuses on reducing inequalities of income, wealth, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have entered a new age of provocative domestic reforms proposed by Democatic presidential hopefuls. But this author argues it is not enough. The global economic system, he argues, must be reformed because it has imposed an austerity regime on the rich world, which will prevent bold new domestic social programs from being passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction explains the logic of bringing together the perspectives of Hyman Minsky and Karl Polanyi to analyze processes of financialization. Although Minsky and Polanyi have very different intellectual trajectories, there are important complementarities in their approaches. The introduction also explains the focus of the three papers in this special section written by Kurtuluş Gemici, Lucas Kirkpatrick, and David Woodruff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to use Karl Polanyi's book, The Great Transformation, first published in 1944, to understand the global financial crisis that began in 2008. Polanyi's basic premise was that a great crisis must result from powerful causes. He argued that the crisis of the 1930s was a consequence of three distinct processes: deep imbalances in the global trading system, a crisis within the global financial mechanism that was supposed to manage those imbalances, and a failure of adaptation in the world's leading economy, the United States. The same processes can be seen at work in the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles Karl Polanyi, Hungarian economic historian, economic anthropologist, political economist, historical sociologist and social philosopher. Information is provide on the extraordinary theoretical contributions of Polanyi to socialist thought, his attack of market liberalism and the role of government and politics in his analysis of market economies.

While financial institutions have not figured prominently in utopian thinking, the democratization of finance is central to any vision of bringing contemporary economies under democratic control. This paper is an initial effort to conceptualize a series of feasible reforms that could incrementally weaken the power of incumbent financial institutions while helping to facilitate economic development that is more egalitarian and sustainable. While the focus is on the US economy, the specific ideas have relevance in other national contexts. The core of the reform idea is to mobilize a combination of governmental supports and grassroots entrepreneurialism to create an expanding network of nonprofit financial institutions that would redirect household savings to finance clean energy, growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this chapter, we argue for an essential dualism in the U.S. economy; there are simultaneously institutional sources of dynamism and institutional patterns that portend a process of decay and decline. This dualism corresponds to a growing divide between innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises and big corporations -- both financial and non-financial -- that are increasingly predatory in their business strategies. Surprisingly, firms on both sides of the divide are increasingly dependent on government. The small- and medium-sized firms rely heavily on government science and technology programs to help them innovate. The large firms need government to protect their position. Whether dynamism or decay will prove to be stronger, we think, is contingent on political choices that will be made over the next ten years. This contingency, in turn, makes it easier to understand the highly polarized nature of partisan politics in the United States today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last four decades, the dynamics of innovation in the US economy have shifted. Whereas the development of new technologies was once dominated by large, vertically integrated firms, since the 1980s an increasingly ‘networked’ innovation environment has emerged in which small firms play a central role. But why did this shift emerge? Extant research emphasizes changes in the decision-making calculus of large firms, the rise of private venture capital, legal changes and a variety of subnational development initiatives. In this paper, we demonstrate the critical importance of government innovation programs. We argue that a single small, relatively unknown program—the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program—played a critical role in catalyzing this broader economic transformation. Drawing on programmatic data, employment trends and data on SBIR's intersection with venture capital and federal procurement, we show how SBIR catalyzed a series of cross-cutting institutional mechanisms that supported the growth of small, innovative technology firms. We propose the term ‘social resonance’ to suggest how even small government programs can play an important role in altering large-scale institutional dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors present a discussion of poverty and public welfare policy in the U.S. as of 2013, in the form of an open letter addressed to former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, viewed as a possible 2016 U.S. presidential candidate. They outline the history of U.S. welfare policy, discussing the passage of the U.S. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) welfare reform law under U.S. President Bill Clinton which eliminated cash assistance to the poor as a federal entitlement. They call for a renewed debate on government poverty programs and the creation of a stronger social safety net. Topics include anti-welfare recipient rhetoric and political competition between Democrats and Republicans.

A global financial crisis seems a propitious time to renew a dialogue between legal scholarship and the field of economic sociology. In the 1920s and 1930s, legal realist scholars developed insightful analyses of market processes. But since post-war mainstream legal scholarship has largely ignored this aspect of legal realism, economic sociology might be helpful in refocusing legal scholarship on what happens in actual market settings. One tool is Zelizer's concept of relational work; that in market transactions, actors must define the nature of their relationship, what is to be exchanged, and by what media. Relational work has an enormous impact on the outcomes of transactions, but it is largely ignored in economic accounts. An empirical study of variations in relational work across economic settings could provide a strong foundation for rethinking the relationship between law and economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue on “Relational Work in Market Economies” by explaining the origins of the concept and its value in illuminating a dimension of market activity that has not been systematically addressed by social scientists. It also explains why this focus on individual economic transactions could be relevant for those whose interest centers on broader questions of political economy. Finally, there are brief descriptions of the other six articles that make up this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, there has been considerable excitement about the economic potential of the 'developmental network state'-decentralized government policies that successfully accelerated growth in several high- and medium-income countries. The question remains whether such a strategy could be successful in less-developed nations whose scientific and technological resources were relatively limited. This paper analyzes the trajectory of Chile, a Southern country which, despite adverse conditions, managed to produce something akin to an economic miracle during the last few decades. Our argument is that Chile's success was based on the developmental network state strategy. Moreover, we highlight the centrality to understanding the Chilean experience of the concept of 'network failures'-a common phenomenon that occurs when domestic production would be best served by network forms of organization but for a variety of reasons, these networks either fail to materialize or fail to take hold (Schrank and Whitford ). Over and over again, we see that the logic behind the actions of the Chilean state was to provide resources that reduced the likelihood of network failures. We examine three case studies of successful export sectors: salmon; wine; and fruit and vegetables. The paper outlines some of the challenges faced by the Chilean model and assesses its long-term viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Bandelj, Hung, and Streeck, I make three basic points. First, while the initial article focused on definitions of capitalism as a system, the critics prefer to see capitalism as a spirit or a tendency that emphasizes the unlimited pursuit of profit. While we are in agreement that such a tendency is destructive, it is confusing to define capitalism this way when most others are using the term to describe a system that they see as coherent. Second, some of the critics question whether efforts to reign in the capitalist impulse can be successful for very long. I argue that the breakdown of restraints in the post-World War II period can be traced to the end of the Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates in 1973. This policy shift was neither inevitable nor the result of political agency by financial or corporate interests. Third, the concept of capitalism fails to illuminate key fault lines in contemporary political economies such as the divide between finance and production or between giant firms and small- and medium-sized enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that social scientists should reconsider the analytic value of the term "capitalism." The paper argues that the two most coherent definitions of capitalism are those derived from classical Marxism and from the Worm System theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. Marx and Engels' formulation was basically a genetic theory in which the structure of a mode of production is determined by the mode of surplus extraction. During the course of the 20th century, however, Marxist theorists had to modify this framework and the result has been an uncomfortable hybrid. Wallerstein resolved these tensions by redefining capitalism in terms of the logic of a worm system. However, his argument has difficulty in explaining the consequential variations over time in the specific rules and institutional structures that operate at the global level. The article goes on to argue in favor of Karl Polanyi's concept of market society because it focuses attention on the political governance of market societies at both the national and the global levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most analyses of the US financial crisis of 2007–2009 focus on the proximate causes. This article sees the crisis as a consequence of the decline of a long-term pattern of accumulation in the USA and seeks to outline the requirements for a new period of dynamic economic growth. Drawing on work done by the French Regulation theorists and the US analysts of Social Structures of Accumulation, the paper attempts to describe the types of institutional changes that would be needed to spark a new period of stable economic growth in the USA and in the rest of the world economy. The paper outlines what a green mass consumption economy might involve. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The articles in these volumes raise a number of important issues that deserve more elaboration in future scholarship. This postscript touches on three of them. The first is the impact of the financial crisis on the discipline of economics and particularly the tendency of that discipline to proceed with little attention to the research of other social scientists. The second is that the speculative excesses in the financial markets require that we think about structural reforms that would create new routes for capital to be channeled to productive purposes. The third is the question of how people in the United States conceptualize the relationship between the state and the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the article "Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States" by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, which appears in the June 1, 2010 issue of the journal "Politics & Society."

Despite the dominant role of market fundamentalist ideas in U.S. politics over the last thirty years, the Federal government has dramatically expanded its capacity to finance and support efforts of the private sector to commercialize new technologies. But the partisan logic of U.S. politics has worked to make these efforts invisible to mainstream public debate. The consequence is that while this "hidden developmental state" has had a major impact on the structure of the U.S. national innovation system, its ability to be effective in the future is very much in doubt. The article ends by arguing that the importance of these developmental initiatives to the U.S. economy could present a significant opening for new progressive initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains on the reasons why the United States is fighting in Iraq. The Bush administration primarily reasoned out that the war is necessary because of the danger posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the benefits of beginning a democratic transformation of the Middle East. Later on, the administration shifted its goals of winning the war to honor the soldiers who have already died. Because of Bush's eagerness to have war with Iraq, alternative theories were given to explain it. One is a psychological one saying that President George W. Bush felt compelled to finish the beginnings of his father in 1991. Meanwhile, the other one explains war as an exercise in old-fashioned imperialism.

This essay argues that Market Fundamentalism—a vastly exaggerated belief in the ability of self regulating markets to solve problems—has become hegemonic in the USA. While it is urgent that sociologists challenge these ideas, they are unlikely to be effective if they confine their efforts to writing articles and books. It is necessary to think strategically and work in concert with political allies to wage campaigns that will challenge Market Fundamentalism directly. The example of a campaign to strengthen the position of employees in the hotel and convention industry is used to suggest the kinds of alliances that are necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a neo-Polanyian theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics within contemporary market societies. It uses this framework to analyze the divergence between the United States and other developed societies that has become more pronounced in the first years of the twenty-first century. The argument emphasizes the shifting political alliances of the business community in the United States and suggests that from 1994 onward, business lost power in the right-wing coalition to its religious Right allies. The growing power of a religious-based social movement is a critical ingredient in the unilateralist turn in the Bush Administration's foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contemplates on the operation of large corporations in a moral economy and suggests a strategy for the transformation of ethically challenged corporations into ethically responsible companies in the U.S. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the corporations are being urged by the public to take an active role in solving the social problems like racial inequality and environmental degradation. It is said that efforts to improve corporate governance and expose corporate malfeasance have failed to reach critical mass.

The article discusses the compassion gap in American poverty. A chart is presented depicting the 2004 percentage of women, men, children, and female-headed households in poverty by racial or ethnic group. Instead of providing them enough support, they receive little or no public assistance at all. Most painfully, the number of people living in catastrophic poverty has increased every year since 1999. Despite the increasing poor population and growing difficulty of getting off poverty into economic security through paid work, U.S. government has been doing less help.

To understand the rise of market fundamentalism from the margins of influence to mainstream hegemony, we compare the US. 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act and the English 1834 New Poor Law-two episodes in which existing welfare regimes were overturned by market-driven ones. Despite dramatic differences across the cases, both outcomes were mobilized by "the perversity thesis "-a public discourse that reassigned blame for the poor's condition from "poverty to perversity." We use the term "ideational embeddedness" to characterize the power of such ideas to shape, structure, and change market regimes. The success of the perversity thesis is based on the foundations of social naturalism, theoretical realism, and the conversion narrative. In the poverty to perversity conversion narrative, structural blame for poverty is discredited as empiricist appearance while the real problem is attributed to the corrosive effects of welfare's perverse incentives on poor people themselves-they become sexually promiscuous, thrust aside personal responsibility, and develop long-term dependency. This claim enables market fundamentalism to delegitimate existing ideational regimes, to survive disconfirming data, and to change the terms of debate from social problems to the timeless forces of nature and biology. Coupling economic sociology with a sociology of ideas, we argue that ideas count but not all ideas are created equal. Only some have the capacity to fuel radical transformations in the ideational embeddedness of markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines how the findings of studies in social and economic history undermine the stories about Speenhamland, a town in Berkshire County, England that have been deployed in social policy debates. Indictment of Speenhamland issued by the Royal Commission Report of 1834; Controversy surrounding the English Poor Law legislation; Trends in productivity and wages exemplified by the standard Speenhamland stories.

Introduces a series of articles which deals with the subject of a world economy organized through a system of self-regulating markets. Progenitors of sociological Marxism; Restoration of international gold standard in the period after World War I; Misery of the rural poor in the decades leading up to New Poor Law in 1834.

Karl Polanyi’s 1944 book, The Great Transformation , has been recognized as central for the field of economic sociology, but it has not been subject to the same theoretical scrutiny as other classic works in the field. This is a particular problem in that there are central tensions and complexities in Polanyi’s argument. This article suggests that these tensions can be understood as a consequence of Polanyi’s changing theoretical orientation. The basic outline of the book was developed in England in the late 1930s when Polanyi was working within a specific type of Marxist framework. However, as he was writing the book, he developed several new concepts, including fictitious commodities and the embedded economy, that led in new directions. Because circumstances did not give him the time to revise his manuscript, the book is marked by a tension between these different moments in his own theoretical development. The result is that Polanyi glimpses the concept of the always embedded market economy, but he does not name it or elaborate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the use of social theory to leap over historical contingencies with reference to the sociologist William I. Robinson. The author says that it can be useful for a scholar to push a theoretical perspective to its outer limits, since the exercise can help to clarify broader empirical and theoretical debates. Hence, Robinson deserves our gratitude for going out on a theoretical limb. Robinson starts from the current scholarly debate about globalization. Social scientists have been struggling to make sense of the tensions between the historic role of the nation-state and processes of economic globalization that are undermining the nation-state's ability to shape its own economic and social policies. Neoliberal policies have been in the ascendant; the usual mix includes privatization, welfare cutbacks, deregulation, lower wages, and higher levels of unemployment. International financial institutions have had increasing opportunities to impose draconian structural adjustment policies on countries that get into financial difficulties.