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The article presents a call for papers for the meeting titled "Annual Allied Social Sciences Association Meetings" to be held on January 4-6, 2008 at New Orleans, Louisiana with a theme about inequality, democracy, and the economy. The Association for Social Economics members and nonmembers are encouraged to submit proposals for the New Orleans ASE program. The papers can be send by email of 300 words or less by May 1, 2007 to John Davis of University of Amsterdam and Marquette University. Guide questions are also included.

The article calls the attention of interested individuals to submit article that will be presented during conferences of Associations concerning economics. The organizers of the Seventh Annual Heilbronn Symposium in Economics and the Social Sciences Christian Freiherr von Wolff that will be held on June 22-25,1995 is inviting everyone to submit abstract and correspondence relevant to the theme. Likewise, the organizers of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the History of Economics Society that will be held on June 2-5, 1995 in South Bend, Indiana is calling the same.

This paper will argue for the need to reinsert practical reason into economics. It will first define, classify, and characterize practical reason. Second, it will show how it applies to Economics (Section 3). Then, it will note the presence of this use of reason in the construction of the United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) Human Development Index (Section 4). Finally, the paper will maintain that the UNDP is increasingly making use of this form of reason (Section 5). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for economics-related papers to be presented at the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics annual meeting on July 28-31, 2003 in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

The article presents several papers related developments in economics as realist social theory. According to the author, social theory expressly committed to work out the nature of social being, and, or how people access social reality is going through something of a revival in economics. The papers presented, provide numerous results, arguments, conjectures, and critiques have been produced in recent years, and aim to take some of these specific developments further. Context of the papers and basic ideas and results are presented.

This paper represents an attempt to follow-up on Kenneth Arrow's long-neglected identification of a ‘logical gap’ in the perfectly competitive foundation of the neoclassical framework. Attention is initially focused on establishing the fact that this logical gap exists and that it leaves the orthodox paradigm without an endogenous account of the manner in prices are determined. The presence of this logical gap implies, in other words, that neoclassical economics fails to provide our discipline with a theory of value. Given this fact, the second, considerably longer part of this paper establishes the broad outlines of a framework in which this logical gap is not present and that is capable, therefore, of providing our discipline with a legitimate theory of value. While prior efforts to develop an explicit account of the manner in which prices are determined provide crucial guidance in this regard, these efforts are extended in terms that address certain shortcomings and traditional sources of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The insight that both ontological and epistemological perspectives are intertwined is certainly correct, but at the same time insufficient to differentiate mainstream from heterodox approaches to economic institutions. As this paper argues, it is important whether one starts from ontological or epistemological considerations first. The paper suggests that the difference can be described in terms of function versus rules and demonstrates that an intersubjective ontology for institutions requires also an intersubjective epistemology. Otherwise, ontological precepts contradict the epistemological ones with important repercussions for understanding knowledge, rationality and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers who have been concerned with the economic implications of military spending have mostly concentrated on its impact on economic growth, corruption, real exchange rate and inflation. In this paper we investigate the impact of military spending on black market premium, an area that has not been tackled so far. After adding a measure of military spending to a well established model of black market premium form the literature, we estimate the model by pooling annual data over the 1985 – 1998 period across 61 developing countries. Results from five panel specifications provide considerable evidence that higher military spending leads to higher black market premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the treatment of ontology offered by critical realism. It addresses much of the material elaborated upon in two editions of this journal. Three main groups of criticisms are made here of the critical realist treatment of open systems. It is argued that critical realism, particularly in the project in economics emanating from Cambridge, UK, tends to define systems in terms of events. This definition is shown to be problematic. The exemplar of a closed system provided by critical realism of the solar system is shown to be flawed in that it is not closed according to the closure conditions identified by critical realism. Second, the negativity of the definitions adopted is problematic for heterodox traditions attempting to build positive programmes. Furthermore, the dualism of the definitions is also inconsistent with Dow's approach, which has ramifications for the coherence of post Keynesianism. Third, the definitions tend to polarize open and closed systems and ignore the degrees of openness evident in reality. The polarization of systems leads to polarized methodology and unsustainable arguments to reject so-called “closed-systems methods.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the doctrines of ‘Wicca’, or what might be termed as pagan or white magic by its adherents, in terms of the economics of religion. The primary focus of the paper is the issue of the degree of product differentiation involved from established religion in terms of two things: the concept of God (or deities) and the ideas of sin. The main contribution of the paper is that it presents (for the first time ever, so far as the author is aware) an economic analysis of the doctrine of a ‘rebound’ effect of any attempts to do harm to other people through the practice of magic. Some basic microeconomic concepts suggest that the moral force of this rebound law is a difficult one to sustain except under very unreasonable assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the social sciences, the dominant “thin” reading of monetary exchange that views it as universally market-like and motivated by monetary gain is being challenged by a “thicker” reading that seeks to unpack the complex and messy characters and logics of monetised transactions. Until now, this re-reading has occurred by studying small alternative economic spaces (e.g., car boot sales, local currency schemes) that can be easily explained away as peripheral or even superfluous to an understanding of mainstream monetised exchange. To provide a more forceful challenge, therefore, this paper interrogates a form of work often seen as an exemplar of market-like work undertaken for the purpose of monetary gain, namely the underground sector. Reporting empirical evidence that unravels the heterogeneous and embedded characters and logics underpinning this work, this paper calls for those promulgating a thicker reading to be bolder and interrogate the meanings of monetary transactions in more mainstream spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a two-tier concept of rationality which broadens the orthodox notion of instrumental rationality in economics. In the first section, I conceive the idea of "background rationality" to consist in the ability to act normally, i.e., according to social conventions appropriate to the context. Background rationality is a necessary condition for the exercise of its instrumental counterpart. Implications and applications of this for economic phenomena are investigated in Section II. The third section draws parallels between the approach to rationality developed in this paper and Thorstein Veblen's notion "habits of thought". I argue that a viable concept of rationality must itself be subject to explanatory scrutiny and justification and not merely posited as given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Georgescu-Roegen's work is usually divided into two categories, his earlier work on consumer and production theory and his later concern with entropy and bioeconomics beginning with his 1966 introductory essay to his collected theoretical papers published in the volume Analytical Economics. Most economists usually praise his earlier work on pure theory and ignore his later work which is highly critical of neoclassical economics. Those economists sympathetic to his later work usually take the position that he "saw the light" and gave up neoclassical theory some time in the 1960s to turn his attention to the issues of resource scarcity and social institutions. It is argued here that there is an unbroken path running from Georgescu's work in pure theory in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, through his writings on peasant economies in the 1960s, leading to his preoccupation with entropy and bioeconomics in the last 25 years of his life. That common thread is his preoccupation with "valuation." The choices our species makes about resource use and the distribution of economic output depends upon our valuation framework. Georgescu-Roegen's work begins in the 1930s with a critical examination of the difficulties with the hedonistic valuation framework of neoclassical economics, moves in the 1960s to the conflict between social and hedonistic valuation, and culminates in the 1970s and 1980s with his examination of the conflict between individual, social, and environmental values. This paper traces the evolution of Georgescu-Roegen's thought about valuation and the environmental and social policy recommendations which arise out of his bioeconomic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the development of Popper's thinking on propensities from his writings on probability during the 1950s through to his 1990 book, A World of Propensities. It is argued that there are significant commonalities between the views expressed in this (his last) book and the metaphysics and methodological implications of Critical Realism. The paper concludes with some consequences for Popperian falsificationism, situational determinism and Popper's later view that propensities may be interpreted as causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of Islamic Economics has traditionally focused on two main areas of inquiry, banking and the public sector. The objective of this paper is an attempt to fill an important gap in the Islamic Economics literature that has been surprisingly overlooked by most scholars in the field. This gap concerns the nature and role of markets in an Islamic economic system. The primary concern is to investigate the nature and structure of an Islamic formulation of markets. The paper engages in a detailed analysis of Islamic scripture, the Qur'an and Hadith, pertaining to the issues of contracts, exchange, markets, prices, regulation, usury, and competition. The paper identifies an active and comprehensive treatment of markets in Islamic scripture that questions many of the misconceptions surrounding the relationship between Islam and markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the perspective that giving meaning to life is a key function of religion: through its narratives, rituals, creeds, and practices, religion clothes life in a meaningful frame. Interestingly, though, meaning of life has not yet appeared in studies on the relation between religion and economic behavior. As meaning of life may prove to be a crucial factor in understanding this relation, this paper seeks to develop a new approach to understanding the link between religion and economic behavior from the viewpoint of meaning of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues in favor of a basic goods approach to outcomes assessment in development policy analysis. It contrasts the basic goods approach with the utility-of-consumption and capabilities approaches and argues, on a number of grounds, that it is a more relevant and appropriate framework. The dimensions of the basic goods approach analyzed include a common, minimalist character, sense of justice, subjectivist-objectivist considerations, the human condition, relationship to policy space, and the theoretical and empirical role of basic needs. Taken as a whole, these perspectives suggest that the basic goods approach offers key advantages not found in the two relevant alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces mental proximity as an ideal-type criterion for assessing the organization of production, and positions it as a benchmark alongside markets and hierarchies in a three-dimensional space. Following a Deweyan approach, the criterion is focused on democratic deliberation espoused by necessary values: the rejection of controlling influences, positive freedom, inclusion on equal terms, informed participation, the desire to reach a consensus, sympathy, mutual respect, reciprocity, and continuous learning. We also identify a community network as a complex of people who seek to relate to each other in accord with mental proximity, and discuss influences on their search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an account of how individuals act as agents when we employ a narrative approach to explaining their personal identities. It applies Korsgaard's idea of a “reflective structure of consciousness” to provide foundations for a richer account of the individual economic agent, and uses this to explain and distinguish the concepts of personal identity, individual identity, and social identity. The paper argues that individuals' personal identities may be in conflict with their socially constructed individual identities. Individuals' social identities are represented as a link between personal identity, and individual identity. The overall framework is proposed as an alternative to the atomistic individual conception and a contribution to the socially embedded individual conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A feature of many European countries after World War II was the kind of institutional arrangements that developed between capital and labour. A central question in the literature concerns whether neo-liberal competitive labour markets or organized corporatist labour markets are more efficient. In this paper the economic and social outcomes from these different market arrangements are compared for a number of OECD countries from the 1980s to the end of the 20th century. Although, in the 1990s strongly corporatist countries remain a great deal more egalitarian than liberal market economies, the evidence from this paper indicates that the latter have outperformed countries with corporatist type arrangements regarding employment and economic growth. It appears that the economic dividend arising from strongly institutionalized industrial relations systems is no longer being delivered. Yet, the outcomes of liberal economic policies of deregulation are increasingly unequal societies. The challenge for advanced democratic societies is to deliver on both social equity and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers information about the development of the periodical "Review of Social Economy." The periodical began publication in 1944 as a double volume on papers that had been presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Social Economics. The association's founding fathers Thomas Divine and Bernard Dempsey published papers in Volume I, Number 1. Over the years more than 1, 500 original articles, review essays, comments, and book reviews have appeared in its pages. Its commitment to set interest in social economics.

This paper intends to provide an evaluation of where the economic research on happiness stands and in which interesting directions it might develop. First, the current state of the research on happiness in economics is briefly discussed. We emphasize the potential of happiness research in testing competing theories of individual behavior. Second, the crucial issue of causality is taken up illustrating it for a particular case, namely whether marriage makes people happy or whether happy people get married. Third, happiness research is taken up as a new approach to measuring utility in the context of cost-benefit analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Symbolic utility involves appreciation and esteem and expressed by symbolic products (gifts), while substantive utility entails ordinary welfare satisfied by substantive products. For neoclassical theory, both utilities are symmetrical or fungible and, hence, substitutable along the uni-dimensional utility function. If they are substitutable, though, why would agents be judged as "crass" if they intentionally remind the recipient of the cost of the substitution? For normative sociological theory, the judgment of "crassness" would arise if the agent mixes moral norms with non-moral substantive interests. The two are supposed to be non-fungible, stemming from multiple selves. If both utilities are non-fungible and stem from multiple selves, though, why do we call agents who spend on gifts beyond their means "fools," while those who spend very little "cheapskates"? It seems that there must be a supervising, single self that makes decisions on the proper division of the budget between substantive products and gifts. But this invites the single-self idea from the back window, reverting back to the neoclassical approach. We would be caught in a vicious cycle of anomalies. To get out of the cycle, this paper identifies the critical issues and suggests an alternative, complex-self view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Symbolic consumption" is formally unrelated to "second-order preferences", but the ability to symbolically consume and the ability to have preferences about one's preferences are each uniquely human characteristics. The major question addressed in this paper is this: are symbolic preferences more or less likely than other preferences to be "unpreferred" by the agent experiencing and acting upon them? In previous writings on second-order preferences, I demonstrated the propensity of market forces to overproduce preferences that are judged to be worse than what they replace and underproduce preferences that are judged to be better. In this paper, I offer reasons for believing that the market inefficiency in preference production suggests a decline in symbolic consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant paradigm in economics views economic behavior as allocative activity in a neutral, C-M-Cʹ economy. As a consequence, money is treated as a veil that is inessential to the real functioning of the economic system. This paper argues that one of Keynes's fundamental insights is the significance of the monetary context of economic behavior. This insight has been developed by the post-Keynesian theory of money as a "time-machine vehicle" that provides the causal link between uncertainty and unemployment. The Circuitist theory of money as the means of final payment provides a complementary radical perspective on the significance of the monetary context. This paper investigates the methodological and theoretical implications of these radical monetary theories and assesses their contribution towards the development of a general theory of a monetary production, M-C-Mʹ economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper distinguishes between epistemological naturalism, which it supports, and ontological naturalism, which it opposes. It sketches the emergence of anti-naturalist social theory among nineteenth-century African-American intellectuals and its refinement by twentieth-century feminists. These movements challenged ontological naturalism in the social sciences by substituting social constructionist concepts of race and gender for naturalist ones. Economics awaits a similar liberation. The paper identifies four naturalist concepts-atomism, determinism and biologically determined race and gender differences--as structuring mainstream economic theory. It concludes that ontological naturalism is inconsistent with the application of the epistemology of the natural sciences to the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationships between religion and economics are both complex and controversial. In this paper is explored one method for organizing those relationships. Four categories are examined which help identify possible options: economics separate from religion economics; in service of religion; religion in service of economics; and religion in union with economics. The paper begins with a definition of what is included under the headings of religion and economics. Next, each of the four categories is described and discussed. Conclusions close the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The task of modem political economy is made more difficult by the confusion surrounding the ranking of competing claims in the social order. This paper is about situating particular interests within the broader claims of society. Using Catholic social thought's universal access principle, overlapping claims for economic resources are weighed according to the unmet needs of the contending parties in the following order of importance: (1) as constitutive for physical survival and basic health, (2) as determinative of life prospects, and (3) as life-enhancing. The finer specification of superfluous income into this threefold typology opens the door to a more nuanced application of distributive justice where norms grow stricter and the tolerance for inequality becomes much narrower as the strength of claims grows in proportion to the urgency of unmet needs. The contribution of this paper lies in its refinement of the concept of superfluous income by distinguishing varying degrees of Unmet needs through a typology that provides terms of reference that are specified in their function, in their theological warrants and in the strength of their claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust is an issue to which Keynesians and post-Keynesians have paid relatively little attention. However, properly understood it is an aspect of almost all activity, including key elements of socio-economic reality. Without trust, market exchange is at the very least problematic, if not impossible. Moreover, trust is intrinsic to a variety of issues with which Keynes, and subsequent Keynesianism have been concerned. In this paper we provide a general social theory conceptualisation of trust and then set out some of the areas where this concept resonates with the work of Keynes in terms of the role of conventions. Conventions quintessentially involve trust and that trust can be unstable, can be withdrawn and can require rebuilding. We illustrate this with reference to central bank policy and the Bank of England's introduction of Forward Guidance. Exploring the problem of trust in the context of banking also highlights a challenge for the continued relevance of Keynes' work. We now live in a neoliberal world and this provides a quite different context for state intervention than was previously the case. Keynes' work is now an argument for the alternative, and as such it requires more than a technical economic argument, it must also address the problem of trust in state policy-makers. We briefly illustrate the challenge this poses with reference to Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces a series of papers presented within the issue about the book Reclaiming Evolution by William Dugger and Howard Sherman.

This paper studies how voluntary material simplicity may countervail the causal effect of relative scarcity generated by the environment of a consumer society. Analyses of both interviews and texts were performed. It is shown that voluntary material simplifiers manage, though with difficulty, to neutralize the causal effect of consumer society. This is achieved by mediating the cultural properties of the economic ethic of material simplicity, which promotes the deflation of human wants. These simplifiers consequently manage, though with difficulty due to causal interference, to deflate their material wants and maintain them below their material means. Consequently, they actualize the modus vivendi of material simplicity; namely, a practical state of relative abundance. One major implication of this study is that the scarcity postulate of mainstream economics is problematically formulated. Hence, the development of a new model of relative scarcity and abundance encourages an explanation rather than an assumption of scarcity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wicksell saw economics as a way to effect social change. In addition to academic writings, he produced a steady stream of pamphlets, newspaper editorials, and public lectures that brought theoretical economics to bear on social policy. In this paper, consideration is given to this wider variety of Wicksell's writings, and his unanimity rule for public goods decision making is examined within the context of his social philosophy. We argue that the unanimity rule, rather than being narrowly focused on efficiency concerns, operated as a practical mechanism to achieve Wicksell's larger goal of social justice. This stands in contrast to the interpretation of Wicksell commonly presented in the public choice literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communitarian philosophers understand morality as emerging in communities through the interaction between agents in practices. At first sight, communitarianism seems to provide a suitable perspective for conceptualizing morality in economics, since the economy might be regarded as a sequence of such practices in communities of business, households, and trading. But several well-known communitarians, such as MacIntyre, Anderson, and Etzioni, are rather sceptical about the economy, and in particular markets, as a location of moral behaviour, which leaves us with a paradox: How can economists re-conceptualize the dominant theory of markets towards a more morally embedded theory of economic life, using ideas from communitarianism, when at the same time communitarians deny the market as a location of morality? This article will argue, first, that such a sceptical view relies on a false dichotomy between market and morality. The dichotomy is explained by the acceptance by three major communitarian philosophers of a narrow theory of economic behaviour: rational choice theory. Second, the paper shows how three key communitarian ideas may be usefully applied to the understanding of economic behaviour. Third, the work by another communitarian, Walzer, is referred to, in order to show how communitarian thought may be related to progressive economic thought in order to conceptualize the market as a morally embedded institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Msgr. John A. Ryan's economic thought regarding the mechanics by which an increase in the minimum wage is funded. In particular, a mathematical comparative-static model is used to explore Msgr. Ryan's economic assumptions concerning the channels by which income is redistributed to workers from other factor owners. The analysis shows that Msgr. Ryan's approach includes assumptions regarding economic relationships and implies specific values of wage elasticities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although, in the nineteenth century, Böhm-Bawerk remarked that relations as a category are distinct from goods, economists today increasingly subsume relations as a particular category of goods, both semantically and by applying methods like Contingent Valuation. This paper shows where the main distinctions between goods and relations lie. It categorizes economically relevant relations along the lines of symmetry and relevance for bystanders. The main obstacles to applying valuation techniques developed for public goods are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Mises's methodological position has been misunderstood by both friends and foes alike. On the one hand, Mises's critics wrongly characterize his position as rejecting empirical work. On the other hand, his defenders wrongly interpret his stance as rejecting empirical analyses on the grounds that they contradict apriorism and push economics towards historicism. We show that Mises's methodological position occupies a unique place that is at once both wholly aprioristic and radically empirical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interrelation between John Stuart Mill's political economy and his social philosophy is often neglected by economists, even though social and moral progress is the aim and focus of Mill's work as scholarship on Mill has made clear in past decades. This paper aims to show how Mill's political economy fits his framework of progress. It is argued that Mill characterized his economics in accordance with his theory of (individual) development, which explained how people could be induced to change patterns of behavior that prevented progress, enabling “a tendency towards a better and happier state.” Mapping out how to overcome the Malthusian trap of poverty, the most serious stumbling block to man's material and moral improvement, Mill brought economics into action as an instrument for progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this journal, Welch and Mueller (WM) (2001) demonstrated a classificatory method for conceptualizing relationships between religion and economics. No judgement can be drawn from WM as to which of their four classifications might be a, or the, correct one. They conclude that the relationships are “both complex and controversial”, and that before any assessment can be apprehended adequately of how the two fields interact, “the permutations and subcategories implied by the system” used need to be identified and explored more thoroughly. This paper pursues that path, but argues that a more determinate verdict than WM's is possible. Here, an alternative interpretation of the relationship between religion and economics is investigated, in which WM's categories are assessed. In the alternative, WM's four classes are not taken to possess equal intellectual merit, as they appear to be. Using more current and comprehensive definitions of religion than WM's, a case is constructed that three of their four categories possess greater intellectual value than the remaining one. These three are here collapsed into one new mega-category regarded as that most validly describing the relationship between religion and economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal critics often object to basic income (BI) on the grounds that it violates reciprocity and is biased toward those who choose voluntarily to opt out of work and thus violate the principle of liberal neutrality toward conceptions of the good life. In the first part of this paper I argue that liberal neutrality favors BI. Marxist critics of BI are less likely to accept liberal neutrality, but I argue in the second part that the argument for BI in the first part applies with equal force to Marxist objections that BI is unfairly exploitative of workers. Marxists are also less likely to accept current labor market trends, seeing socialism as affording more opportunity for guaranteeing everyone a right to decent work, and suspecting BI of making the unfair inequalities of capitalism a little more palatable while diverting attention from a more equitable socialist alternative. I argue that BI is not incompatible with socialism or Marxism, and should not be opposed to but rather combined with strategies for full employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic, large discrepancies exist between direct measures of well-being and the measures that economists largely concentrate on, notably income. The paper assesses and rejects claims that income is satisfactorily correlated with well-being, and addresses the implications of discrepancies between income measures and measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and objective well-being (OWB) and also between subjective and objective well-being measures themselves. It discusses a range of possible responses to the discrepancies: for example, examination of the specifications used for income, SWB and OWB, and looking for other causal factors and at their possible competitive relations with economic inputs to well-being. It rejects responses that ignore the discrepancies or drastically downgrade their significance by adopting a well-being conception that ignores both SWB and OWB arguments (e.g.: by a claim that all that matters is choice or being active). It concludes that the projects of Sen and others to build syntheses of the relevant responses require further attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More realistic economics has to start out from the most basic socio-economic phenomena and processes, i.e. dilemma-prone interdependencies and strong uncertainty among agents that have become ubiquitous phenomena in the world today. In the reality of the “new” economy these are represented by functional and spatial fragmentation of value-added chains, global de-regulation and disembedding of the most powerful economic agents, on one hand, and increasing complexity and high integration of goods and services and net-based tele-IC-technologies on the other hand. All these rather new phenomena entail ubiquitous actual or potential co-ordination failure, either in the form of conventional “market failure”, with a complete mutual blockage of action, or of “wrong” co-ordination, or technological “lock-in”. Both forms are indicative of an insufficient capacity of the co-ordinated action required. In contrast, capability of sustainable innovative action in a broad sense requires new forms of co-ordination beyond “market” and “hierarchy”. Economics thus has to be defined more than ever as a science of effective co-ordination and the generation of innovative and sustainable collective action capacity. The global corporate economy has developed individualist arrangements to cope with that new co-ordination problem, such as local clusters and hub&spoke networks, which all have severe shortcomings. Against this background, the paper develops a setting with ubiquitous direct interdependencies, net-externalities, “strategic” strong uncertainty and ubiquitous (latent) social-dilemma problems. It discusses the possibility of an ideal decentralized and spontaneous co-ordination through emergent institutionalized collective action, specifically of “well-governed” network co-operation. In conclusion, it is argued that only a hybrid system of networks together with a new public policy role, supporting collective learning and emergent institutional co-ordination, i.e. an “interactive” and “institutional” policy approach, is capable of solving the co-ordination problems of the “new” economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a major shift within macroeconomic policy over the past two decades or so in terms of the relative importance given to monetary policy and to fiscal policy in both policy and theoretical terms. The former has gained considerably in importance, with the latter being rarely mentioned. Furthermore, the nature of monetary policy has shifted away from any attempt to control some monetary aggregate (prevalent in the first half of the 1980s), and instead monetary policy has focused on the setting of interest rates as the key policy instrument. There has also been a general shift towards the adoption of inflation targets and the use of monetary policy to target inflation. This paper considers the significance of this shift in the nature of monetary policy. This enables us to question the effectiveness of monetary policy, and to explore the role of fiscal policy. We examine these questions from the point of view of the "new consensus" in monetary economics and suggest that it is rather limited in its analysis. When the analysis is broadened out to embrace empirical issues and evidence the clear conclusion emerges that monetary policy is relatively impotent. The role of fiscal policy is also considered, and we argue that fiscal policy (under specified conditions) remains a powerful tool for macroeconomic policy. This is particularly an apt conclusion under current economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a large individual data set from the Euro Barometer Survey (ICPSR 1993) to estimate the influence of religious phenomena on self- perceived satisfaction of an individual, controlling for macroeconomic conditions, effects of his political stance, and other socio-economic variables. Our estimated ordered logit model results show that an individual's life satisfaction is positively related to measures of strong religious attachment in the sense of being willing to commit to attending religious services frequently. Our other findings include that no strong evidence exists for the hypothesis that leftists suffer more from income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the origins and evolution of the concept of the disutility of work. The original formulation of this concept developed by Stanley Jevons and by Alfred Marshall recognizes the variability of work motives stressing the effects of both the quantity and quality of work on labor supply. Subsequent writers, notably Lionel Robbins, and later Gary Becker, focus on the opportunity cost of work time, to the neglect of the content of work. These writers lose sight of the influence of the nature of work on the supply of labor. Contemporary research on the economics of labor supply, while accepting the presence of agency problems surrounding the enforcement of the labor contract, continues to consign the determinants of work motives to a black box. The new emphasis on the problem of "shirking" by workers, in particular, offers an unbalanced treatment of the causes and consequences of work resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we set out to deepen our understanding of the importance of fairness in decision-making within the context of Prisoners' Dilemma games. A review of the "historic" Flood-Dresher experiment provides a useful empirical basis, as it allows us to look in considerable detail at how the experimental players made up their minds. We try out several game-theoretical readings of the experimental results, and find some value in Adam Smith's age-old concept of rules of conduct. We find that fairness considerations are much more than mere excuses for taking a free ride or pointers to focal points. They seem to play a considerable role both at a conscious and at a less-than-conscious level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has shown growing shares of employment in the social economy (or non-profit sector) both in the European Union and in the United States. In the EU, there seems to be growing hopes that the social economy will be capable of contributing to local progress on the unemployment issue in crisis regions. This paper analyses employment in certain entrepreneurial forms, usually considered belonging to the social economy, in Sweden during the 1990s. The results show considerable regional differences of employment in the social economy, but also that its share of the labor market is very limited. The effect of social-economic organizations on employment, therefore, is probably mainly indirect in as much as they function as platforms for cooperation between firms or else as embryos for enterprises by strengthening local entrepreneurship and helping to nurture a deposit of social capital which has visible effects on private business and jobs. However, these effects need more detailed examinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the political environment in South Africa is vastly improved, economic apartheid still exists: the economic divisions along racial lines created by apartheid are still in place today. Despite these divisions, neoliberal economists continue to press for a largely unregulated market system, which is unlikely to improve the lives of most black South Africans. This paper documents the role neoliberal economic theory has played and is continuing to play in frustrating and opposing fundamental change in the distribution of land, income and assets in South Africa. Neoliberal policies stem from an ideological attachment to free markets, rather than a substantive analysis of how market forces play out in an unequal society like that in South Africa. By choosing to focus on narrowly defined economic criteria such as GDP growth and allocative efficiency, neoliberal economists marginalize the vast problems created by inequality and poverty and thus overlook the potential benefits of a redistributive strategy. Neoliberal economic policies have been installed in South Africa by the ANC via GEAR and other policy initiatives, but these policies have made little progress in solving South Africa's economic problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the Information Theoretic Economics and Austrian Economics investigate the impact on market activity of problems of information and knowledge. The conceptions of information and knowledge they employ, however, as well as their respective views on and treatment of economic agency, are quite different. The purpose of this paper is to examine these differences, not primarily from an abstract philosophical point of view, but by looking at substantive examples of the economics offered by the two approaches. An attempt is made to explain the Austrian preference for non-formalist approaches to economic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a concept of human well-being that integrates economic and noneconomic aspects of life. Philosophers, humanistic psychologists, and religious traditions have been very helpful in pointing out the true noneconomic potential of human life. Our new approach to well-being, the overall/ordinary approach includes these higher aspects of human life. In addition to the ordinary adult human functionings, basically the functionings Sen mentions, the new approach includes a group of higher human functionings which are called overall human functioning. To adequately assess a person's or a society's well-being, it is necessary to consider both people's ordinary (or lower) functionings and their overall (or higher) functionings. Raising societal well-being requires capital formation, particularly investment in personal and social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two reasons why personalist economics lies outside the mainstream. Personalist economics (1) rejects the premises of mainstream economics, and (2) takes exception to certain dominant values of today's culture whereas the mainstream is much more at ease with contemporary Western culture. This paper addresses both reasons and is organized accordingly. In it the author argues that the individualism and the autonomous individual of mainstream economics have their roots in the seventeenth-eighteenth century Enlightenment, that is well before the development of electronic means of communication. Personalism and the acting person of personalist economics emerged during the electronic stage of communication and, the author argues, are much better suited to the twenty-first century. The author calls for a reconstruction of economics which would replace the autonomous individual with the acting person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]