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In the intricate tapestry of environmental discourse, the field of political ecology emerges as a powerful lens through which we scrutinise the interplay of power, nature and society. This paper stages a dialogue with Paul Robbins to examine environmental justice, the decolonisation of political ecology, colonialism, sovereignty, climate change and capitalism. The dialogue challenges the conventional narratives of sovereignty and underscores the imperative of genuine decolonisation—beyond metaphorical interpretations—calling for the restitution of land and authority to Indigenous Peoples and other historically marginalised communities. The dialogue highlights the importance of moving away from capitalist systems that exacerbate environmental degradation. The dialogue calls for decolonising political ecology by including diverse perspectives, methodologies and ontologies and underlines the importance of control over productive resources. It emphasises that addressing the impacts of colonialism requires recognising and honouring the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples and suggests that political ecology can contribute to decolonisation by focusing on sovereignty and supporting legal and institutional frameworks that empower marginalised communities. The paper discusses the way forward and the future trajectory of political ecology by suggesting that future research in political ecology should focus on diverse economies, embrace emerging technologies and rework academic institutions to value knowledge co‐production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper critiques the relationship between personalist ethics and institutional economics, and accepts that institutional economics can be difficult to reconcile with humanistic management that builds on personalist ethics. Even so the paper connects impersonalist ethics with institutional economics. On this ground, the paper demonstrates how theory and practice of personalist humanist management can lean on impersonalist ethics, i.e., institutional economics. Three pathways are laid out for such leanings. It is argued that to understand these alignments is important to improve the success of humanistic management, when a market economy context is given. The paper further contends that personalist humanistic management may imply abandoning the market economy when it positions itself in opposition to institutional economic reasoning that underpins the market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines food couriers' utilization of voice mechanisms as mobilization against employer silencing within platform capitalism. The concepts of 'worker silence' and 'worker voice' are used to facilitate an understanding of the way in which workers respond to workplace problems, as well as their capacity to respond within this specific context. Findings illustrate the role of technology as a facilitator but also inhibitor of worker voice. In particular, online food delivery companies' over-reliance on algorithmic management and their online app drove couriers to silence. However, in reaction to managerial silencing, we show that couriers are not passive recipients of forces beyond their control, and attempt to explore new trajectories and modes of voice in order to influence their working conditions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demise of socialism in Eastern Europe and the transition to a market economy in China and India marked the end of traditional comparative economics as a field. The debate between capitalism and socialism was settled. The economic calculation argument of Ludwig von Mises seemed no longer relevant. In its place, the new comparative economics (NCE) arose. The NCE focuses on the institutional differences that affect the protection of contract and property rights. The research program of Andrei Shleifer has provided numerous insights into how markets operate. This paper examines the Shleifer‐inspired program in comparative economics in light of the economic calculation argument Mises made. Although the recent developments in comparative economics have extended and complemented the contributions of Mises, it has not displaced them. An account of the economic calculation problem is still missing in the new comparative economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author comments on the paper "Private Sector Asset Management and the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy: Theory and Practice," by Hyman P. Minsky, published in this issue of the journal. The author comments on the separate sections of Minsky's paper such as whether a capitalistic economy is inherently unstable or not, and whether mild inflation is accepted as a satisfactory trade-off against a deep depression. The author argues that there is no complete system for analyzing the behavior of the economy and the U.S. Federal Reserve System. The author states that Minsky's framework did not present evidence for the 1966 credit crunch or the threats to the financial integrity of mutual savings banks and savings and loan associations in the U.S.

Estimating the contribution of enslaved workers to output and growth in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century is a crucial building block to better understand the contours of nineteenth‐century US economic history, and more generally, the connection between slavery and capitalism. Existing estimates only present a partial picture and are potentially problematic. In this paper, we use data on enslaved person valuations to calculate the contribution made by enslaved workers to regional and national gross national product (GNP) in 1839 and 1859 and to the growth in per capita output in the 20 years before the Civil War. We find that in the United States, enslaved workers were responsible for somewhere between 12.49 per cent and 18.0 per cent of the increase in output per capita between 1839 and 1859. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global price increases have reached their highest levels in recent times. Finding the reasons for the price increase is very important for economic stabilization. In this paper, it has been estimated that exorbitant price increases may be related to a free market economy. For this purpose, unlike other studies, a comparative analysis of the impact of the free market economy on prices was conducted. The study covers the period 1990–2020, and using the U.S. economy, which is a free market economy, the relationship between property rights, the size of government in the economy, and prices were examined using the autoregressive distributed lag model. The results show that the free market model has a positive effect on the price increase, while the size of the government's economy does not affect the price increase in the same direction. This study aims to provide a different perspective to policymakers in the fight against price instability, which is one of the most important problems facing the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: In 1992, I sent Milton Friedman a draft of my 1993 paper “Friedman's Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility.” He and I corresponded at length. My 1993 paper argues that Friedman's published formulations of his theory are not equivalent and that they prescribe different courses of action in many possible cases. In our correspondence, Friedman conceded that his two formulations of his theory are inconsistent and, at my suggestion, he endorsed a modified version of the view he presented in Capitalism and Freedom as the preferred version of his theory. This modified theory is an important formulation of his position. In one of his letters to me, Friedman writes: “I agree that corporate executives might have duties to the general public which sometimes outweigh their duties to the shareholders.” I argue that this creates major problems for his theory. I also answer Friedman's published response to one of my criticisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence suggests shifts (structural breaks) in the volatility of returns causes non‐normality by significantly increasing kurtosis. In this paper, we endogenously detect significant shifts in the volatility of oil prices and incorporate this information to estimate Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) to accurately forecast large declines in oil prices. Our out‐of‐sample performance results indicate that the model, which incorporates both time varying volatility (without making any distributional assumptions) and shifts in volatility, produces more accurate VaR forecasts than several benchmark methods. We make a timely contribution as the recent more frequent occurrences of unexpected large oil price declines has gained significant attention because of its substantial impact on the financial markets and the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate within political economy on how finance affects capital–labour relations. Industrial relation scholars have demonstrated that financialization empowers capital and induces the liberalization of industrial relations. Additionally, meso and macro level studies show that finance reduced the labour share during neoliberalism. However, the literature is relatively limited and does not extend to the pre‐WWII period. Considering finance as historically integral to capitalism, this paper estimates the impact of finance on the labour shares of France (1911–2010) and Sweden (1891–2000). The results show that mortgage debt decreases the labour shares of both countries, thus, the financialization of households induces industrial discipline historically. However, the negative effect is substantially smaller in Sweden where housing finance is state‐led and bargaining coordination is centralized over the last century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The paper, using a simple theory-based measure of the variations in aggregate economic efficiency in a New Keynessian structure, analyses the nature of the business fluctuations and estimates their welfare costs in Turkey during the period 1998-2009. The measure contains two components: a price markup and a wage markup. It seems that the latter mainly drives the fluctuations in Turkey. The paper also shows that inefficient fluctuations in the allocation of resources do generate moderate welfare costs on average. However, the aggregate efficiency costs increase much more during deep recessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative infectious disease externalities are less prevalent in the absence of government intervention and less costly to society than is often supposed. That is so for three reasons. (1) Unlike externality‐creating behaviors in many classical externality contexts, such behaviors are often self‐limiting in the context of infectious disease. (2) In market economies, behaviors that may create infectious disease externalities typically occur at sites that are owned privately and visited voluntarily. Owners have powerful incentives to regulate such behaviors at their sites, and visitors face residual infection risk contractually. (3) The social cost of infectious disease externalities is limited by the cheapest method of avoiding externalized infection risk. That cost is modest compared to the one usually imagined: the value of life (or health) lost to the disease if government does not intervene. We elaborate these arguments in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent literatures about complex systems indicate that the economy self-organizes under control mechanisms. By applying the theory of control mechanism to capitalism, this paper analyzes why the ongoing world financial crisis is a credit crisis and the epistemological root of credit crisis-information asymmetry. Furthermore, this paper argues that neo-liberalism economic system and the defective credit management system, which lead to the deficient government supervision and consistent lack of effective government supervision, caused the world financial crisis. This paper also argues that rescue measures taken by many countries cannot resolve the financial crisis fundamentally. Some measures are proposed at the end of this paper to strengthen the negative feedbacks, aiming at defusing or avoiding crises fundamentally. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on how we can productively theorise the contemporary treatment of property, by a range of different economic agents, as a locus for the attempted creation of economic value. Its argument is that the theorisation offered by David Harvey (1982) in The limits to capital has a continued and arguably even heightened relevance in the present-day context, but that this theorisation can be embellished with insights from the sociology of finance, particularly in regard to the power of representation. This argument is developed with reference to two parallel empirical ‘stories’ from early twenty-first century capitalism: the economist Hernando de Soto’s influential thesis about the ‘mystery of capital’ and his related policy ideas; and the attempts of western-based financiers to extract profit from companies with significant real estate assets by separating those property assets from the operational side of the businesses in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolving efficiency and the joint effects of thin trading, structural breaks and inflation on dual long memory in Small and Medium Enterprise stock markets in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The state‐space GARCH‐M, ARFIMA‐FIGARCH, ARFIMA‐FIAPARCH and ARFIMA‐HYGARCH models are adopted. The results determine that the Hong Kong and Singapore markets exhibit potential tendencies towards efficiency, implying the efficacy of several institutional reforms. The three aforementioned factors jointly have reducing effects on the magnitude and/or statistical significance of long‐memory estimates. The Thailand and Malaysia markets show a smaller degree of volatility persistence, indicating a good hedge for portfolio risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On April 20th, 2010, an incident was to take place 49 miles off the Louisiana coast at the Macondo Prospect location in the Gulf of Mexico that would potentially change the future of offshore oil drilling. On that day, 11 men would lose their lives when the 33,000 ton Deepwater Horizon rig, owned by Transocean but leased by BP PLC, exploded. As a result of the explosion, millions of barrels of oil would be released into the Gulf of Mexico, leading to widespread environmental harm and devastation to the shoreline communities. To better examine the underlying reasons for how such an event could take place in 2010, this paper will unfold as follows. First, we provide context to the oil spill by discussing the history of BP, including its transformation into an "environmental" firm in 1995. Second, we explore and analyze the catastrophe through the lens of ethics. Finally, we analyze the disaster through a comparison with the U.S. 2008 financial crisis with a view to identify the root causes of the disaster and the string of ethical failures that have scarred the market economy over the past three or four decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using New Institutional Sociology (NIS), we seek to explain the variation between what was intended with the Vietnamese reforms to audit in 2011 and the actual practice, and why there is variation. This paper reports findings from interviews with 70 individuals representing identified groups of stakeholders in the market for audit and assurance services in Vietnam. Overall, the findings indicate that there still exist business risks for foreign companies that pursue trade and commerce in communist Vietnam, particularly where non‐Big 4 audit firms are involved in the external audit function, as in some cases auditor independence is most likely compromised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms in transition economies experienced a large exogenous shock in their external business environment in the late 1980s when these economies moved from a socialist-oriented economic environment to a more market-oriented economic environment. This paper examines the following research question in the context of this change: What are some factors that influence transition economy firms to successfully change their operating know-how or knowledge sets to reflect the demands of their new environment? Building on some core ideas from literature on organizational imprinting, knowledge-based view of the firm, and firm search, we suggest that two factors have a profound impact on a firm's ability to change. The imprinting effect of firms' prior socialist institutional and market environment adversely impacts their ability to change their operating knowledge. At the same time, firms that search for new knowledge from distant sources (located in mainly non-socialist countries) are able to successfully change their knowledge to meet the demands of the new market-oriented economy. Both of these aspects also have joint interdependent effects on the success of change; distant search mitigates some of the adverse impact of socialist market imprinting, but that is not the case for the impact of socialist institutional imprinting. These findings have interesting implications for both researchers and practitioners involved in transition economy settings. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas prices serve to allocate many resources in market economies, there remain vast reservoirs of unpriced resources to be managed. Business management and strategy concerns the creation, evaluation, manipulation, administration, and deployment of unpriced specialized scarce resource combinations. This paper applies the formalism of cooperative game theory to these concerns. In cooperative game theory, rents appear as the negotiated payments for the services of scarce valuable resources. The division of surplus is determined by the relative values created by different use combinations of resources. Within this framework, the strategy problem is clearly seen as one of discovering or estimating the value of various resource combinations. New wealth can be created by trade in resources as long as there are hitherto unexamined combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders the post-1943 versions of Kalecki's theory of the cycle and the trend of a capitalist economy which is free of any government involvement and in which labour supply is expanding. Kalecki's proposition on the central role of innovations in preventing the trend rate of unemployment from increasing is shown to apply only to the case when investors react slowly to changes in profitability (capitalists are cautious) and when, in addition, innovation-induced investments are low, either because innovations are rare (capitalism is sluggish) or because firms that do not innovate can still survive (captialism is poorly competitive). The reason for Kalecki's too general a proposition is shown to be his incorrect analysis of the stability of the trend growth rate of output. This paper offers new stability analysis as well as some extensions of Kalecki's theory. The reported results make his models richer and place them closer to the mainstream of macroeconomic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the formal setting of optimal taxation theory, this paper identifies the degree of Rawlsianism (poverty aversion) exhibited by European social planners, beginning with the observation of actual data and redistribution systems. The paper contributes to the comparative research on the structure and typology of welfare capitalism. The social preferences implicit in tax-benefit systems are recovered by inverting the optimal taxation model for all European countries using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data. The results are discussed in light of the four worlds of welfare capitalism classification proposed by Esping-Andersen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the patterns of buyer and seller structure among business units in the PIMS database and how buyer/seller structure is related to profit outcomes, both long-term through the product life cycle and short-term between periods of boom and recession. Businesses with a favourable structure (few sellers, many buyers buying items of low importance) typically maintain margins through the product life cycle, hut if there are many sellers facing few and determined buyers, margins and profitability are likely to deteriorate in recession and to continue to decline through the life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The title of this paper presumes that we should be teaching courses called Investments. Before we address ourselves to the subject title, it appears to be of some importance to ask the question--Why should we teach an Investments course? The answer to this fundamental question should lead to some conclusions as to where in the curriculum a course or courses in Investments should be offered and what the course content should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates that Kornai's original concept of the soft budget constraint (SBC) as a theoretical innovation in micro-theory disguises income redistributions that are essentially macroeconomic relationships. The SBC also postulates a competitive market economy as the benchmark of hard budget constraint (HBC) and efficiency. A recent formal theory explains the SBC as a component of profit-maximizing strategic behaviour. From this perspective, the SBC can be integrated into the new microeconomics, but it loses its specific institutional connotation and its macroeconomic dimension. The SBC is thus included in ubiquitous market-type relationships, particularly complete (optimal) contractual arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the context, the details and some of the criticisms levied against the well-known numerical example of comparative advantage that David Ricardo set out in chapter 7 of his PRINCIPLES. Particular attention is paid to the distribution of the gains from trade, to the relative importance of static and dynamic factors and to the political dimensions of trade theory. The paper concludes by relating Ricardo's trade theory to current controversies over globalization, unequal exchange, Third World poverty and the existence of different varieties of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business is undergoing a conceptual revolution. Since the Global Financial Crisis there are many new ideas and proposals to make capitalism more responsible. The purpose of this paper is to identify key flaws in the 'old story' of capitalism. Six principles are explained that taken together form the basis for a new story of business, one of responsible capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the Confucian veneration of the past and its commitment to transmitting the tradition of the sages. It does so by placing it in the context of the historical trajectory from the May Fourth attacks on Confucianism and its scientistic, iconoclastic approach to 'saving China,' to similar approaches to China's modernization in later decades, through the market reforms that launched China into global capitalism, to the revival of Confucianism in recent years. It reexamines the association of the Pragmatism of John Dewey and Hu Shih with the scientistic iconoclasm of the May Fourth Movement and argues that a broader scrutiny of Dewey's and Hu's works, beyond the period when Dewey visited China, reveals a more balanced treatment of tradition, science, and modernization. Pragmatists believe in reconstructing, not destroying, traditions in their pursuit of growth for individuals and communities. Despite a tension between the progress-oriented historical consciousness that Dewey inherited from the Enlightenment (a consciousness that some consider as characteristic of modern Western historiography) and the historical consciousness underlying Chinese historiographical tradition (one that views the past as a didactic 'mirror'), it is possible to reconcile the Pragmatic reconstruction of tradition with the Confucian veneration of the past. This paper argues for a Pragmatic Confucian approach to Chinese traditions that is selective in its transmission of the past and flexible enough in its 'preservation' to allow for progressive change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the varieties of capitalism thesis for its implications for strategy and strategic management. It considers the grounds for an integrated approach to strategic management, which will make firms less susceptible to sudden economic change in global markets. The paper is structured into four parts. In the first, the nature of the varieties of capitalism thesis is examined ( Hall P. A. and Soskice D. (2001). 'An introduction to varieties of capitalism'. In P. A. Hall and D. (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, pp. 1-68. Oxford: Oxford University Press). In the second part, two distinct strands of theory and research in strategic management (the outside-in and inside-out views of strategy) are considered, and how these might condition thinking about strategy, management and organizational learning. The third part explores convergence in strategic management, and explicates a model from research at Nissan, which brings core competencies and dynamic capabilities to the strategic management of the large multinational firm. The fourth part concludes with a critical assessment of the varieties of capitalism and the likelihood of a convergent strategic management after the global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their apparently pervasive reach and relevance, the geographies of branded commodities and their branding have been unevenly recognised and under-researched. This paper presents a way of conceptualising and analysing brand and branding geographies. Focusing upon goods and services, the notion of geographical entanglements is developed to understand the spatial associations and connotations that unavoidably ensnare brands and branding. Second, it examines how such attachments shape and are shaped by brand and branding agents, including producers, circulators, consumers and regulators. Last, the placing of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding is developed as a means of lifting their 'mystical veils' and prompting reflections upon their politics and relationships to uneven development. Situating branding genealogies in geographical context, the empirical analysis comprises a socio-spatial biography of Newcastle Brown Ale (NBA). It explains how NBA's geographical entanglements have been (re)constructed in its contrasting survival in the UK and growth in the US. As a way of thinking about brand and branding geographies, the paper seeks to broaden the reach of economic geographies at their intersections with cultural economy approaches and to stimulate debate about their politics and alternatives to uneven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with Foucault's writing on food provisioning in the mercantile period, this paper explores how a moral economy of hunger is gradually replaced by a political economy of food security that promotes market mechanisms as a better protection against scarcity. In Western Europe the emergence of political liberalism and laissez-faire economics substantially shaped how hunger and scarcity were conceptualised and socially managed. Beyond Europe these social forces were manifest in the development of colonial plantations. Here the transformation of non-capitalist social formations into market economies - what Harvey (2003) terms 'accumulation by dispossession'- was a foundational moment in the development of a global provisioning system that undermined the anti-scarcity strategies of some populations, while ensuring food security for others. The subsequent discovery of the 'Global South' hunger, together with the desire to encourage better habits and purer morals among 'backward' peoples, created the context in which further curative interventions, designed to consolidate a capitalist food economy, were valorised and maintained. These reflections set up the final part of the paper, where I contextualise recent efforts to present agro-biotechnologies as a pro-welfare and anti-scarcity response. Moving beyond the causes of hunger to explore its strategic function, this analysis highlights how corporate agribusiness - in partnership with the life sciences - is attempting to recondition human, animal and bacterial life in order to quicken the reproduction of capital. I term this new moment in the commercialisation of food systems accumulation by molecularisation. The paper concludes by examining how the corporate management of food folds into biopolitical strategies for managing life, including the lives of the hungry poor who are 'let die' as commercial interests supplant human needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has shown that the “spirit of capitalism”—a preference for wealth itself, in addition to consumption—has important implications for growth and asset pricing. This paper explores how the spirit of capitalism affects saving and consumption behavior. We demonstrate that the spirit of capitalism may reduce the importance of precautionary savings. It can also explain the excess sensitivity puzzle: the spirit of capitalism causes dramatic deviations from a random walk. It may also offer a partial explanation of the excess smoothness puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of mechanism design theory, and explains the roles played by Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson in the development of this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurst and Lusardi (2004) use a specification with higher-order polynomials to estimate the relationship between wealth and entrepreneurship. They find evidence against the existence of extensive liquidity constraints in the United States. In this paper, their approach is replicated on Swedish data. A positive relationship between wealth and entrepreneurship is found, which supports the liquidity constraints hypothesis. Alternative methods for handling the endogeneity problem and distinguishing between absolute decreasing risk aversion and liquidity constraints lend further support to the hypothesis. The analysis suggests that there exist liquidity constraints in Sweden, which are possibly more extensive than in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study of the Slovenian company Sava during its 1995–2004 transition period when it adapted to and prospered in a free market economy. The company is particularly interesting because of its successful transition from a socialist company operating in a protected market to a privatized company operating in a capitalist global market, as well as the pivotal role of information technology (IT)-supported organizational learning that brought about radical change and successful transition. Our investigation of Sava’s experiences demonstrates how the company’s increasing attention to organizational learning, integration of working and learning, and its constant innovation of products and processes created new needs for IT support that motivated the adoption of new IT systems (such as Lotus Notes, document management systems, SAP), which in turn increased Sava’s capacity to learn. Furthermore, our study reveals how the role of IT systems in organizational learning depends on the nature of learning (single-loop, double-loop or triple-loop learning) and the organizational level at which learning takes place (individual, group/department or organization). By providing insight into the emergence of distinct types of IT-supported learning and their vital role in Sava’s successful transition, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between IT and organizational learning that is relevant and inspiring to other companies, especially those operating in transition economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has highlighted the value of employing the idea of networks to describe the interrelatedness of today's globalizing economy. Networks facilitate flows of knowledge, ideas, managerial techniques and capital between firms both within and across political borders. This paper argues that the reconstruction of social connections through which information is created, given value and exchanged is fundamental to an understanding of not only contemporary but also historical patterns of economic globalization. We focus on the networks of the capitalist elite running 12 major multinational enterprises, active across British imperial territories, between c .1900 and c .1930. An examination is made of the economic and spatial interlocks between firms created by board members who were multiple directors. Social underpinnings of multiple directorates are examined by exploring the common, overlapping social spheres within which individuals engaged. A clearer grasp of the ways in which corporate activity operated in the early 1900s can provide a better understanding of the social context of global economic operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the essentials of George Reisman's net consumption, net investment theory of aggregate profit as discussed in Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. The paper then relates Reisman's ideas to those of Austrian School economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. Delimiting time preference to determining the rate of net consumption, the primary determinant of aggregate profit, Reisman argues that under an invariable money, a one-time increase in the rate of saving is sufficient to stimulate an increase in the supply of capital goods indefinitely. Reisman thereby rejects the claim that capital accumulation causes a falling rate of profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Biangai (Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea) expressions and transformations of environmental imaginaries through women's mourning songs (yongo ingi) and the songs of string bands. Biangai personhood, once intimately connected to garden lands and trees, hunting and forest paths, is increasingly influenced by global capitalism. Through their songs, they betray an increased tension between acting as an individual person and acting in terms of kin based relationality. While yongo ingi still memorialize the social spaces and land rights of the deceased, they also express conflicts in Biangai engagement with gold mining. Biangai string bands emerged just prior to Papua New Guinea's Independence in 1975, with the first band recording and releasing a national cassette in 1982. Dominated by young men, they depict the intersection of local music with a Melanesian modernity composed of compensation payments, gold mining, love, travel, and marketing. Both yongo ingi and string bands inform each other and provide insight into how local music engages images of both global economy and global ecology. By examining the uses, meanings, and performative contexts of these songs, this paper contributes to our understanding of the role of such expressive forms in connecting persons and their environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a context of gradual privatization and rapid marketization in China, this paper draws on detailed research of the perceived impact these have had on the work, status and attitudes of different industrial relations ‘actors’ within seven enterprises in Guangdong and Shanghai in 1998–9. It will be shown that the main pressure for tightening control over the workplace has come from the development of markets and that privatization has had important but limited catalytic effect in this process. Considerable internal and external constraints restrict the impact of privatization, which stem from China's continued ambivalance towards capitalist market relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article "The Role of the Manager's Human Capital in Discretionary Disclosure," by Venky Negar. It is suggested that Negar presents an interesting deterrent to voluntary disclosure by a manager. Negar makes the assumption that a disclosure of the manager's private information sets off the market to acquire further information and to use the information to reassess the manager's ability. The author asserts that the most intriguing element of Negar's article is the assumption that disclosure triggers information production by the market.

The paper advances a threefold theoretical contribution using a system, society and dominance (SSD) effects framework to show how and why sustainable management-labour workplace partnerships are a chimera. First, managers (employers) find it increasingly difficult to keep workplace bargains with employees (unions) owing to increasingly neoliberal 'system' effects associated with capitalism as a globalized accumulation model. Second, workplace mutuality will be rare because of 'societal' level effects under voluntarism. Third, 'dominance' effects arising from the power of dominant economies and their multinational corporations can inhibit workplace mutuality. Drawing on empirical case study data from Ireland, the future prognosis of management-labour collaboration under neoliberal work regimes is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of these two notes is to supplement the discussions of the Marxology of the so-called "transformation problem" found in two papers are highlighted in the present context from among the legion of recent contributions dealing with this aspect of Marx's thought because they are most concerned to treat the "problem" in its original setting, that is, as an intellectual issue that Marx himself was faced with resolving. As such they contribute significantly to our understanding of Marx as an outstanding figure of intellectual history. The present notes are to be interpreted in this same way.
Our ideas do not conflict with the conclusions of Baumol and Morishima and Catephores. Rather do we extend the scope of textual evidence which may be used to support some particular points made by these authors. It is our belief that more precision in dealing with the concerns set out below and in the two papers to which we have referred above is essential if we are adequately to understand the rationale and significance of the "transformation problem" as Marx himself saw it.
The first note concerns Marx's bibliography and the second deals with a methodological point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frederick Buttel was one of the pioneers in studying the social impacts of biotechnology, claiming originally that it will involve profound changes in social structure. Recently Buttel turned around his argument proposing that, rather than revolutionary, biotechnology is more a "substitutionist" technological form to be applied to declining sectors of the economy than an "epoch-making" technology. This paper provides both external and internal critiques of Buttel's new position based on the concept of the "third technological revolution," looking at the impact of new technologies as a global and interrelated phenomenon, and not on an individual case-by-case basis. The concluding section suggests the necessity of bringing into the analysis those living in the Third World: 60% of this population lives from agriculture and will be affected by the deployment of agricultural biotechnologies, whether through "substitutionism" or through totally new products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Old order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, can be classified as one of the oldest alternative communities in the United States. In this paper, we wish to examine ways in which the productive role of Amish women helps maintain Old Order Amish society, and the way these roles vary with woman's position in the life cycle. The contribution of women to production varies greatly between societies (Sanday, 1976). Furthermore, this contribution is not always recognized. Recently writers have argued that housewives not only perform private services for their husbands, but that their work helps maintain industrial capitalism (Malos, 1978). We believe our findings are informative not only with references to Amish society but that they are helpful in providing clues about women's roles in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a model of a competitive financial market economy in which there are not only stock and bond markets but also insurance markets. In the model's most naive form, the analysis shows that the corporate value of the insured firm equals that of the uninsured firm and in this case the firm has no active role to assume in managing corporate risk. The model is then modified to incorporate costly bankruptcy and agency problems. Then the analysis shows that the corporation has an incentive to purchase insurance because it may eliminate or reduce the bankruptcy and/or agency costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents redistributive taxation and economic growth as a noncooperative differential game in which the politically powerful poor (workers) control redistribution whereas the economically powerful rich (capitalists) control accumulation. Both groups are assumed to be interested in maximizing the sum of their own discounted consumption over an infinite horizon. The players use trigger strategies which permit the construction of threats designed to sustain cooperation as an equilibrium, The properties of the trigger strategies and the dependence of sustainable cooperative policies on the technology preferences and development history of the economy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a simple model of growth and accumulation in a pure capitalist economy. The model integrates Keynesian ideas on effective demand with a Marxian emphasis on class struggle and the reserve army of labour. For reasonable parameter values the model has a unique (non-trivial) balanced growth equilibrium, the equilibrium is unstable and using the PoincareBendixson theorem it is shown that the economy will exhibit perpetual fluctuations around the balanced growth path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent institutionalist scholarship has theorized the liberalization or 'disorganization' of capitalism as the result of shifts in economic actors' 'logic of action' towards opportunism. Little attention has been given to the reverse possibility that shifts in economic actors' 'logic of action' away from opportunism might contribute to 'embedding' or 'organizing' capitalism. This paper builds on recent scholarship to theorize this scenario and then demonstrate its empirical validity with an historical institutionalist study of the emergence of such a 'non-liberal' institution in Switzerland in 1961. The theoretical framework links three 'logics of action' - opportunism, enlightened self-interest and strong solidarity - to Höpner's typology of capitalist institutions - organized, coordinated, and liberal. It theorizes the interactions between these logics and the social mechanism - goal signaling - that can explain a shift from one logic of action to another, potentially leading to change from one type of institution to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The achievements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have been analysed by Gary Sampson in the December 2018 I Australian Economic Review i . The WTO's success in achieving almost universal membership has also been a curse insofar as change in, or extension to, WTO rules is by consensus, which has been difficult to achieve. These arrangements have taken a variety of forms but are all deep agreements going beyond WTO commitments and including areas poorly covered or ignored in WTO law such as digital trade. [Extracted from the article]