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This essay discusses the nature of, and challenges for, social economics. It begins by exploring how social economics differs from mainstream economics in its goals, definition, and models, and briefly examines the roots of Neoclassical orthodoxy. It then argues that social economists need to take more seriously the human and social nature of our created knowledge. An example from the empirical study of gender and risk preferences illustrates the effects of personal and cultural factors. The essay also argues that social economists have not yet sufficiently challenged the orthodox economics view of the economy as an ethics-free sphere. This view has contributed to increased inequality and a failure to act decisively in response to climate change. A better understanding of where orthodox economics models and methods come from opens up new ways of understanding our search for knowledge and emphasizes the importance of ethics in economic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that it is a mistake to define habit as behaviour or action; as a regular conjunction of actions; as a stock; as a form of automaticity (although habit is acquired and activated automatically); as a tendency, propensity or disposition (even though habit acts tendentially); as a mechanism; and as a process (even though habit is acquired and activated via several processes). A taxonomic definition is provided wherein habit is a cognitive representation of a cue-action response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of drugs in international political economy tend to focus on the relative advantages and disadvantages of particular regulatory regimes and governmental policy approaches. While the particular regulation(s) and social context(s) differ, the drug literature is in this sense repetitive and neglectful of significant features of the global drug economy. Drawing on social economics, we argue that the neglect of broad and holistic, synthetic, integrative and comparative drug research in IPE stems in part from a research program in which the state is "essentialized", resulting in drug research that is too narrowly cast. Borrowing from social economics, poststructuralist Marxism, and new materialism, we develop an anti-essentialist approach for thinking about the global drug economy in an effort to reveal aspects of global drug production, distribution and consumption, and the power relations entailed therein, that are currently obscured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which social entrepreneurship knowledge is both propelled and hindered by the socioeconomic circumstances. We examine the existing body of research and identify different conceptualizations and main schools of thought. We then demonstrate how the process of constructing academic representation is shaped by the prevalent public discourses. Our analysis leads to the differentiation between social entrepreneurship as mitigation and social entrepreneurship as transformation. We conclude that a better alignment of the two approaches - broadening research focus from outcome to process - would reveal their complementarity and contribute to the conceptual advancement of the discipline. We propose expanding the existing approaches with the politics of social entrepreneurship studies and stress the importance of increased reflexivity on the plight of the new discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key question raised in the social sciences is the mechanism that transforms the uncoordinated behavior of individuals in society into coherent systemic outcomes, and whether these outcomes are socially desirable. Regarding (i), the general equilibrium model focuses on individual producers and individual consumers, but other analyses can examine agents who are both consumers and who specialize in the production of different things. Concerning (ii), the neoclassical model relies on two mechanisms: the responses of individual quantity decisions to prices and price changes due to market conditions. [Extracted from the article]

This paper aims at investigating gender differentials in wages and education from an intergenerational perspective across four developed countries of southern Europe, considering the generational transmission of preferences and the gender equality systems and policies. Measures of gender inequality in wages and education permit exploring the different extent to which gender gaps depend on unobserved factors, such as discrimination. A first set of discrimination indexes is computed starting from the estimation of extended Mincerian log-earnings equations, whereas a second set is based on the estimation of ordered logistic regressions on a range of personal characteristics considered to be linked to education, controlling for family background. The main results show that family background affects the degree of gender inequality more than the gender equality policies do. Gender disparities in professional outcomes can be partly due to women's preferences vs. lower-paid jobs because of the incomplete efficacy of national systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economics education is proving slow in incorporating into the syllabus the genuine advances made in economics research in the last few decades. As economics education relies primarily on the single approach of neoclassical economics, whilst recent advances in research have been marked by a wide variety of approaches, many of which are interdisciplinary, the methodological divide between education and research is growing wider. We attempt to measure how keen students are to incorporate research findings in the syllabus by developing a questionnaire which introduces undergraduate students in Italy and the U.K. to key findings in the research literature on genuine sociality, an area in which the methodological divide is very noticeable. Students display moderate support for being taught the material on genuine sociality. Students who wish to incorporate genuine sociality in the syllabus tend to be older, value virtue and have a religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our lived experiences of the economy shape the metaphors that we use to describe the economy. Yet, any particular metaphor can only provide a partial perspective. There are two ways our conceptual frameworks have reflected partial perspectives. The first is historical: our conceptual frameworks tend to build upon ideas developed during the factory age. A machine metaphor, grounded in the industrial age, focuses on the transformation of resources into outputs, but it obscures other aspects of economic life. Second, economic concepts and metaphors are affected by our personal standpoints and our social identities. As social economists, we recognize that our economy is embedded in society, a society in which social identities such as class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality shape our standpoints. To fully understand the continuities and changes in how social provisioning is organized, we need to be attentive to these social identities and how they are constituted and transformed through social practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's speech on economist Karl Polanyi and the economy as a social construct, delivered before the Association for Social Economics (ASE) World Congress, Brock University in June 2015. Topics discussed include Polanyi as economist of the social, family influences in Polanyi’s lifelong commitment to socialism; and Polanyi’s "Double Movement" of social resistance to marketization.

This paper discusses the ways that capabilities and human development theory can guide the creation of entrepreneurship programs, utilizing a framework of human-centered design thinking. It is well known that a variety of institutional factors shape gender outcomes and gender inequality within entrepreneurship, particularly with regard to necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship and informal versus formal sector entrepreneurship. Failure to understand the diversity of entrepreneurial activity among women, and the connection (or lack thereof) of such activity to human freedom, leads to biased entrepreneurship programs. This paper links social economic theory and practice by: (1) discussing the ways that capabilities and human development theory relate to entrepreneurship programs; (2) demonstrating that human-centered design thinking reflects the capabilities approach; and (3) showing how the design thinking framework would be used to create a gender-sensitive entrepreneurship program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative consumption schemes require the selection of producers and traders according to criteria and through processes that should make alternative values concrete. The way values turn concrete is crucial for the effectiveness of such projects. This paper investigates the ways criteria and processes are defined and their real meanings and uses through the case of associative local currencies. Drawing on the framework of proximities, it analyses local currency schemes as combining proximities (geographical and non-geographical) and selection processes set up for providers wishing to join. Selection processes may be based on a charter, an approval committee and screening criteria. The objectives of the selection, its measures in principle, the way in which it is applied as well as the practical consequences are discussed. Even when charters and formal participatory schemes for selecting providers are established, proximities appear as the keystone of selection and trust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Organic farming is considered one of the most important rural development tools in the European Union, often connected to the socio-economic objectives of small-farm support and employment generation. Using an EU-27 regional panel data-set from 2000 to 2010, I show that the share of a region’s agricultural area under organic methods is positively associated with average farm size. Furthermore, I show that the share of organic farming in a region is not associated with higher application of agricultural labor per hectare. Both results question the connection between organic farming and the aforementioned objectives, and point to the conventionalization of European organic farming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social economics has long been concerned with the effects on human societies of market-coordinated processes of economic innovation. But the social economy also causes invention and innovation, an aspect that has received less attention. This article reviews three new approaches to the study of the growth of knowledge in economic systems as driven expressly by sociocultural mechanisms and dynamics. The first are so-called “social network markets” and “novelty bundling markets”. The second extends from “knowledge commons” to “innovation commons”. The third is a sociocultural semiotic process of group dynamics. These models represent different ways the social economy generates newness and produces innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory action research (PAR) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) involve traditional subjects of research in the co-creation of research design, data collection, and analysis. PAR has been used in the fields of public health, education, and geography. A case study of a local economy CBPR project will be discussed. The increasing use of field and behavioral experiments in economics together with recent critiques of the ethical commitments of economic policy raises important questions about the role of expert knowledge, indigenous knowledge, and the relationships of power and privilege involved in mainstream academic research. The applicability of the PAR method for economics will be investigated in light of the epistemological and ethical commitments of social economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a shortened and revised version of the Closing Plenary given to the World Congress of the Association of Social Economics, and Cairncross Lecture, University of Glasgow, June 2012. Mainstream economics is seen as unfit for purpose because of deficiencies that have long been criticised by a marginalised heterodoxy. These include the taking out of the historical and social even if bringing them back in on the basis of a technical apparatus and architecture that is sorely inappropriate. These observations are illustrated in passing reference to social capital but are particularly appropriate for understanding the weakness of ethics within mainstream economics. An alternative is offered through taking various “entanglements” (such as facts and values) as critical point of departure, leading to the suggestion that ethical systems are subject to the 10 Cs—Constructed, Construed, Conforming, Commodified, Contextual, Contradictory, Closed, Contested, Collective and Chaotic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major premise of this paper is that social and individual well-being depends significantly on people's capacity to learn and unlearn in communication with each other. This paper builds on social economic traditions that see communication and conversation as evolutionary generative and adaptive mechanisms through which individual and social learning occurs. Drawing on educational psychology and organizational behavior scholarship, five dynamic processes of conversational learning are introduced with the contention that they can help social economists understand at a micro level more deeply and more concretely how learning happens in the give-and-take of conversation. The paper explores the role of the state, organizations, and communities in fostering individual freedom and dignity, human rights, and economic democracy and concludes that the investment of value in people and their capability for purposeful action as social economic stakeholders can be enhanced through conversation as learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors reflect on the journal "Review of Social Economy" (RoSE). They states that RoSE has published articles that covers relationship between economics, ethics, and social values since 1942. They mentions the changes that will be applied in the journal such as the introduction of a "Speaker's Corner" which will features papers that cover related social economics issues and the scale back of book review section to thematically related books.

For two decades following World War II, Sweden and Norway diverged markedly concerning domestic migration and urbanization. While the Swedes encouraged migration from economically weak rural districts to more prosperous urban areas, Norway worked to deter migration from its weakest region and retard the growth of its largest cities, including Oslo. This paper highlights economic foundations for those divergent policies, focusing on historical circumstances, conventional thought, and eminent economists. The discussion applies today as nations ponder the possibility of less centralized urban networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the influence of community characteristics on self-proclaimed environmentalism. We find that the composition of a community affects the likelihood that a person claims to be a strong environmentalist even after controlling for individual political leaning, socio-economic characteristics, and pro-environment behaviors. Individuals are more likely to claim to be strong environmentalists if they live in areas where a larger share of the population has post-graduate degrees, if they live in heavily Democratic areas, or if they live in heavily Republican areas. These community effects occur only when individuals are predisposed to take on an environmental identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers brief profiles of M. G. Hayes, Adriaan Hoogendoorn, and Stephen Nash, who contributed to the writing of the journal.

By exploring the implications of the linkage between Knight and Pragmatism, some non-trivial implications can be argued to exist. Specifically, section 2 outlines the T.C.E. literature, and how it exists in an atmosphere mixed with Marshallian competition and Knightian uncertainty. Section 3 then considers the disparate philosophical positions behind the work of Knight and Marshall. Knight's critique of Marshall is seminal, not because of any trivial technical innovations that Knight may have inspired within economic theory, but because Knight grounds his work on a philosophical viewpoint that effectively devastated Hegelian philosophy: American Pragmatism. Section 4 then links together the previous two sections by considering how the T.C.E. literature exhibits a dependency on both Pragmatism and Hegelian philosophy. The non-trivial implications of understanding the T.C.E. literature as a branch of Marshallian economics, which recognises Knightian uncertainty, are developed in section 5. Possible conclusions and a summary of the argument are provided in section 6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A priority in trust research is to deepen our understanding of trust processes: how does trust develop and break down? This requires further understanding of what actions have what effects on trust in interpersonal interactions. The literature offers a range of actions that have effects on trust, but gives little explanation of why they do so, and how the actions “hang together” in their effects on trust. The question is what different classes of trust building actions there may be. Using a “relational signalling” perspective, we propose hypotheses for classes of action that trigger the attribution of mental frames (by the trustor to the trustee), and trigger the adoption of those frames by the trustor. A survey-based empirical test of trust building actions among 449 managers in 14 European countries confirms the hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how and why donors divide gifts between people in the present (across distance) and between the present and future (across time). US donors tend to give less to charities that benefit the poor and more to charities that benefit the non-poor (such as museums, universities, and arts organizations). Many of these wealthier charities have created endowments that benefit not only present persons, but also future persons. We develop a shorthand framework for linking time to distance in charitable allocations that incorporates a “proximity preference,” i.e., charity that prefers those who are nearer to us whether by reason of physical distance, psychic-identity, or temporal distance. Even though ethical considerations suggest that recipients' level of need should be the dominant factor in allocating gifts, donors also express preferences, ceteris paribus, for benefits arriving sooner rather than later, and for recipients who are ''closer'' rather than farther away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically evaluates the recent shift away from a “thin” reading of monetary exchange, which views money transactions as universally market-like and profit-motivated, towards “thicker” readings of exchange, which identify the permeation of wider economic relations and not-for-profit logics. To do this, an empirical study is reported of what happens when money penetrates informal exchanges between family, friends and neighbours. The research findings lead to a more nuanced reading of monetary exchange being brought to light. The main finding is that the imagery and perception of paid informal transactions may be constructed and interpreted in “thin” terms by participants, even if the core motives and personal relations involved in paid mutual aid remain “thick.” Significantly, while such a finding does not constitute a change in behaviour towards “thin” marker readings of economic exchange, it may explain why some people are dissuaded from undertaking paid mutual aid. In this way, while the paper does not reject the social and cultural embeddedness of economic exchange, it does serve to problematize the move towards thicker descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on economist Amartya Sen's views on the impact of social decisions in solving economic problems. Sen states that economic problems including poverty, hunger, and violation of political freedom impact the well-being and social life of an individual. Sen believes that a capability approach can be followed to examine economic issues and to improve the quality of life of people.

An essay is presented on postmodernism of social economy as reflected on the book "Socialism After Hayek," by Theodore A. Burczak. It offers the generational importance of the book as a symbol of the intellectual cohort of Burczak. The author discusses the conducts in which Burczak's work was actuated by the dominance of postmodernism in economics in 1980s. It explores the effect of postmodern ideologies on Burczak's analysis of Hayek as well as his theorization of a commercial society.

This paper examines the theoretical underpinning of contemporary trade policies through a social economics lens. The paper offers a social economic critique of the theory of comparative advantage and the recently developed theory of comparative institutional advantage. Subsequently, the paper develops a more comprehensive and general theory of comparative institutional advantage consistent with the principles and methodology of social economics. Furthermore, it suggests ways in which this social economic-geographic version of the theory of comparative institutional advantage can be used in the construction of trade policies which are more likely to have a beneficial impact on the welfare of communities and to foster the fulfilling of human needs and potential. This version of the theory serves to reorient the focus of economic policy to the welfare of the community and the income-generating possibilities of trade. And it serves as a superior guide to policymaking because it is better able to define the root causes of regional success than standard trade theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The source of economic development and growth is specialization in the context of comparative advantage. Growth in capital and other inputs, energy use, and technological change are insufficient to explain the magnitude of growth. Earlier critics of economic growth failed to connect growth to specialization, and so were distracted by nostalgia and sentiment. The specialization process itself produces three significant problems. First, as economies become more specialized, they become less flexible. Second, diversity tends to make ecological systems more robust, while specialization weakens them. Third, specialization produces social isolation. Solutions to these problems may be found in participatory, indicative planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the contributors of the journal "Review of Social Economy," Volume LXVI. Siobhan Austen is an associate professor in the Economics Department at Curtin University and a co-director of the Women in Social and Economic Research (WiSER) group. Bart Engelen is a postdoctoral researcher of the Research Foundation Flanders. Carole A. Green is a professor emerita of economics at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Thomas D. Jeitschko is an associate professor of economics at Michigan State University.

The paper investigates the relationship between fundamental uncertainty, a recurrent theme in post-Keynesian economic literature, and economic performance in transition economies. Uncertainty in the transitional economic environment is enhanced by factors such as institutional transformation, political and social instability, and legacies of the past. To capture the changes in the levels of transition-specific uncertainty, the authors have designed the uncertainty index, based on a weighted selection of Heritage Foundation and Freedom House data. The correlation between the uncertainty index and growth is strong and clearly negative. Panel data analysis based on a growth model, supplemented by variables to simulate transitional cycle, and performed on a sample of transition economies for the period 1995-2002, confirms that high levels of transition-specific uncertainty had a negative impact on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the view of the author on the variations of economics imperialism. The author states that under the banner of economics imperialism, neoclassical economics has long laid claim to the social referring as non-market and as non-individual, that economics responds to market imperfections. The author states that the core principles of mainstream economics are as strong as ever within the discipline and alternatives are correspondingly weaker. Accordingly, economics imperialism is a consequence of the universal applicability of the marginalist principles. The author further states that the task of social economics is not primarily futile at the margins of orthodoxy but to exert a major influence across the social sciences.

Principles from the social thought of the Indian philosopher P.R. Sarkar are employed to show that there exists an optimal level of economic inequality that joins the values of economic justice and efficiency. Sarkar favored establishing a living wage as well as a maximum wage that allows for work incentives. It is argued that the primary justification for inequality is to provide incentives for individual productivity, and that the value of those incentives should not exceed the economic contributions they produce. To determine the relative importance of income incentives in motivating individual economic contributions, it is found necessary to develop a multifaceted model of human productivity. Such a model is developed using concepts from humanistic psychology. A Sarkarian individual productivity curve is introduced in diagrammatic analysis to demonstrate the existence of an optimal level of inequality, and also to explain the persistence of extreme income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article profiles several contributors of "Review of Social Economy." Richard V. Adkisson is the president-elect of the Western Social Science Association and a Professor of Economics and International Business at New Mexico State University. Sebastian Berger holds a degree in Business Administration from Chemnitz University of Technology and fields of specialization include theory of social costs, ecological and resource economics. Heather Boushey is a Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The lump-of-labor fallacy has been called one of the "best known fallacies in economics." It is widely cited in disparagement of policies for reducing the standard hours of work, yet the authenticity of the fallacy claim is questionable, and explanations of it are inconsistent and contradictory. This article discusses recent occurrences of the fallacy claim and investigates anomalies in the claim and its history. S.J. Chapman's coherent and formerly highly regarded theory of the hours of labor is reviewed, and it is shown how that theory could lend credence to the job-creating potentiality of shorter working time policies. It concludes that substituting a dubious fallacy claim for an authentic economic theory may have obstructed fruitful dialogue about working time and the appropriate policies for regulating it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France harbours three large retailer cooperatives which, put together, account for more than a third of the national market share. The largest of these is Leclerc, a leading firm on the French territory. The paper presented here shows how, through the particular distribution of property rights and decision patterns, this cooperative, although hampered by an unstable size, manages to compete with integrated firms. Indeed, the processes that have been developed enable the cooperative to acquire long-term property rights on the specific assets (stores), while remaining in the cooperative framework. The system built is efficient because incentives remain high for members to increase their own performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of path dependence and lock-in have received growing acceptance but have generally been thought of as driven by positive feedback on the supply side of the economy. A case through example is made here of how endogenous preferences positive feedback in utility from consumption, social considerations, and institutional considerations can all lead to path dependence and the persistence of suboptimal consumption choices. The case here specifically relates to meat consumption and utilizes behavioral, institutional, as well as neoclassical approaches to justify the conclusion. It is argued that increased meat consumption, which at one time may have had positive value, has developed increasingly negative consequences both at the individual and social level. Negative impacts include health consequences, low production efficiency, and environmental damage, among others. Nevertheless, preferences for meat are maintained by multiple factors including historical dependence of tastes, socially established meanings of consumption choices, and institutional inertia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amartya Sen's capability approach is a perspective that (unlike approaches that focus only on resources or goods) takes into account the heterogeneities between human individuals in the assessment of well-being and advantage. Nevertheless, the recognition of diversity between individuals also poses difficulties to the application of the capability approach in welfare analysis. Tony Lawson's structured ontology will be suggested here in order to render (empirical) diversity compatible with the need to make more general (possibly universal) welfare analysis (and policy prescriptions). This is so because Lawson's structured ontology distinguishes between an empirical level, where diversity exists, and an ontologically distinct level of the causal factors underlying the former: universalizing and generalizing can be made at this latter level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of state-created homogeneity on the ability of socially distant individuals to trade. I show that where the state is absent, socially distant agents adopt the customs, practices and institutions of outsiders they desire to interact with. By creating a degree of homogeneity, agents signal their credibility to each other. These signals, in turn, enable inter-group exchange. Formal institutions provided by government can create noise in these signals. This noise incapacitates the information mechanism employed by heterogeneous agents to enable trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 25 years, the relative economic situation of women, African-Americans, and other groups facing economic discrimination has improved but, paradoxically, the relative economic situation of the population's lower half has worsened. These opposite trends are surprising since the very groups whose overall situation has improved remain disproportionately represented in the bottom half. This paper presents several likely explanations of the trends. First, there has been a historically unique distancing of the upper economic half from the lower economic half that has lessened the former's interest in aiding the latter. Second, the increasing belief in free markets that has characterized the period is argued to be consistent with the removal of prejudices based on race, gender, and ethnicity while at the same time eroding institutions that relieve class income differences. Third, the fact that one can “exit” from a social class, but must raise one's voice to improve the treatment of one's gender or race is argued to have weakened the overall status of the lower half, while strengthening the overall status of women and African-Americans. And fourth, certain psychological biases are argued to have caused weakened support for collective efforts to improve the condition of the lower half. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between the administrative enforcement of environmental regulation, ethnic heterogeneity, and other community characteristics in New Jersey and New York. We find that the percentage of non-white population in a community is positively related with administrative penalties imposed on violators. However, penalties are lower in more ethnically diverse communities. This result may be due to the fact that these communities are less likely to coordinate to create solidarity across ethnic groups and demand stronger enforcement. [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]

This article presents the stated objectives of the Catholic Economic Association are to discuss scientifically problems of economic policy, the solution of which requires a knowledge both of economic science and of Christian social principles. To clarify the relationship of economic science to the other social sciences and disciplines, particularly Christian philosophy. Human efficiency is enormously enhanced by the use and control of vast systems of capital goods. The natural resources and human labor embodied in these capital goods and the materials constantly being processed by them have both their social aspect.

This article asserts the social and economic significance of reproduction, feminists have demonstrated both women's economic contributions and a major site of power inequity. From the domestic labor debate to bargaining models of the household, much of the theoretical analysis of the political economy of gender has focused on understanding the sphere of reproduction. Conventional economic methods tend to neglect the process by which gender interacts with and shapes other social forces and institutions.

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]

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]

The ongoing expansion of global markets and their concomitant global rules and value systems appears to be unavoidable as international agreements and institutions like the WTO, IMF, World Bank and EU support previously unknown levels of global market liberalization and free trade. National policies and institutions are rendered increasingly powerless in the process. Is the result of the expanding global market and one of its most far reaching regional example, the European Union, a growing loss of national and regional identity and homogenization or are there renewed opportunities for smaller scale, context specific economies and diverse institutions? These are the questions this special issue seeks to examine. It does so by assessing the impact of globalization and European Integration on five Western European economies that exemplify particular social-economic types--the Anglo-Saxon model (Ireland), the Mediterranian model (Italy), the social market model (Germany and France) and the Scandinavian model (Denmark). The introductory chapter starts with a brief discussion of (1) the relevance of globalization to social economics, (2) institutional considerations of globalization pressures and 'pressure-free' spaces and (3) a brief summary of the five contributions to this special issue and their assessment of recent developments in individual member countries of the European Union. While the chapter concludes that the answer to the question "homogenization or diversity" is still out, it observes that much of the answers to the apparent economic efficiency challenges given by the five European economies discussed, resemble each other. The homogenization of the new global reality may, paradoxically, lie in its diverse, yet common solutions. The real challenge may thus well lie in finding ways for these specificities to persist without resorting to the aggressive defense of regional and national identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the debate over the destiny of the coordinated market economy versus the expanding liberal market model, this article argues that the analysis of the re-regulation of capitalism must address the embedding infrastructure of the market. Since social support sectors are an important part of this embedding infrastructure the article focuses on organizational change within Germany's social sector as a basis for a new perspective on the future of German welfare capitalism and develops a complimentary understanding of the "social sector economy." The empirical discussion focuses on organizations providing social support services in a direct or indirect way, on the changing environments in which they operate, and on their strategies for coping with change. The discussion indicates that the German model is slowly but surely evolving toward a "disorganized" welfare capitalism shaped by both formal institutional stickiness and considerable change of the social sector's service provisions. While this change leads to more heterogeneous outcomes in terms of welfare it is also conducive to social innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that neo-liberal globalization has neither homogenized Ireland's institutional social economy nor forced a retreat into an Irish cultural fortress. Instead, the elite community of Irish social partners responded to its own national crisis, American led globalization and European integration by taking the country in two apparently contradictory directions at once: towards European neo-corporatism and Anglo-American neo-liberalism. In so doing, they refashioned Ireland's liberal corporatist welfare state into a new form of Irish neo-liberal corporatism symbolically situated between Boston, Berlin and London. However, it is unclear if the internal tensions generated within Irish society by this attempt to reconcile apparent contradictions, and the changing external environment, will allow the Irish to continue having their cake and eating it too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades a new associationism and cooperativism perspective that takes on a broader, civil-society and solidarity-based view of the economy has developed in France. This perspective resonates with the long tradition of "reform-economics" that France is known for and expresses an understanding of economic relationships as embedded in non-market and non-monetary social relationships. Such broadly understood conceptions of economic activity defy narrow definitions of profit orientation, production and distribution. Economic activity motives include social and political ones that link 'civil entrepreneurs' in solidarity networks to service recipients and other stakeholders. One of the functional foundations of this new interdependent notion of the economy is the growing 'tertiarization' of economic activities, that is the "intensification of social interactions within productive systems" (Perret and Roustang 1993: 59-60). While the market economy is dependent on the non-monetary economy, the tertiarisation of production activities accentuates the interdependence between the market economy and non-market economies. This article seeks to analyze the links between the re-emergence of a civil and solidarity-based economy to the evolution of new forms of public commitment and the changing structures of productive activities in France. It further argues for a theoretical perspective that provides an analytical framework for a more comprehensive approach to the empirical complexity of social economic considerations consisting of three economic spheres: the for-profit economy, the public sector economy and the generally locally based non-monetary reciprocity based economy. Given its ability to link these three poles the civil and solidarity-based economy can revitalize social and political link and consolidate the social fabric while at the same time creating jobs. Yet despite this potential, its mission cannot be to the problems of unemployment and other failures of the market economy. It is instead to facilitate relationships between paid and volunteer work in a context that makes users, workers and volunteers the participants in collectively designed services and economic relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents announcements related to the field of social economy. Ellen Mutari of Richard Stockton College is the recipient of the William R. Waters Summer Research Grant for Summer 2001. The International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics is in search for research proposals in line with its first conference on the future of heterodox economics.