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Regarding the variance of economic voting, the literature draws on various political institutions and individual-level contexts but pays little attention on how to comprehensively analyze political and economic spheres. Given that politics and economy are closely intertwined by resource acquisition and allocation, this study proposes state-business relations (SBR) to explain the variance across countries. The empirical analysis of 31 OECD countries from 1995 to 2019 confirms that the SBR's explanatory power is significant as a coordination mechanism in a country and moderates political and economic contexts. This study highlights the importance of systematic integration of political and economic spheres and calls for additional efforts to elaborate the nuance of SBR in economic voting across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In economics, race is often used as an explanatory variable. However, context for observed correlations is not often discussed and when it is, the discussion truncates history to the 1960's and the era of the Civil Rights movement. The latter is consistent with the projection that regulation has limited or eliminated racial disparity and therefore, other factors, cultural and individual, account for observed economic status. However, the evidence to counter this is observable. For example, to the extent that the intergenerational impact of oppression is factored into economic analysis, and qualitative attributes such as anxiety and depression are incorporated into the explanation for the persistence of poverty, social norms rather than race are revealed to be the contributors to present period variations in economic outcomes. Inspired by bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress we address how the teaching of economics has contributed to the normalization of racialized discrimination. We then address how the economics curriculum can be used as a tool to facilitate racial equity. The discussion adds value to the discourse on race by addressing how the commoditization of teaching has eliminated classroom engagement and critical thinking and concludes with the value of transgression in addressing social justice in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to create a more solid interdisciplinary bridge between sociology and mainstream economics in the study of economic behaviour, especially in terms of the housing market. This is an important aim: It would indeed be valuable to combine insights from both disciplines to find mutually benefiting synergies. The aim also is challenging, and I find the merit of this article to be in raising such discussion and providing an attempt to offer insights from sociological housing research on the understanding of housing price dynamics and thus on housing economics. Unfortunately, there are several notable complications is the article's discussion and analysis, due to which I do not think the aim of the article is reached. In any matter, I encourage the authors as well as other sociologists and housing economists to continue this debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychology and economics are powerful sources of expert knowledge in contemporary governance. Social and emotional learning (SEL) is becoming a priority in education policy in many parts of the world. Based on the enumeration of students' 'noncognitive' skills, SEL consists of a 'psycho-economic' combination of psychometrics with economic analysis, and is producing novel forms of statistical 'psychodata' about students. Constituted by an expanding infrastructure of technologies, metrics, people, money and policies, SEL has travelled transnationally through the advocacy of psychologists, economists, and behavioural scientists, with support from think tank coalitions, philanthropies, software companies, investment schemes, and international organizations. The article examines the emerging SEL infrastructure, identifying how psychological and economics experts are producing policy-relevant scientific knowledge and statistical psychodata to influence the direction of SEL policies. It examines how the OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills, a large-scale computer-based assessment, makes 'personality' an international focus for policy intervention and 'human capital' formation, thereby translating measurable socio-emotional indicators into predicted socio-economic outcomes. The SEL measurement infrastructure instantiates psychological governance within education, one underpinned by a political rationality in which society is measured effectively through scientific fact-finding and subjects are managed affectively through psychological intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the travel of biometric data of Syrian refugees in Jordan through a hastily evolving political economy characterized by a pervasive craving for the extraction, storage and brokering of displacement data. It analyzes iris-enrollment as problematic acts of quasi-citizenship for the displaced requiring the performance of social and economic docility in order to attain identity, cash and service provision. Quasi-objects in the form of digital footprints are fashioned through infrastructures that simultaneously seek to model, yet fail to capture, socioeconomic existence in displacement contexts. Discourses of anti-fraud, donor dictates, upward accountability and strategies of financial inclusion of 'the unbanked', facilitate the marketization of the creation of data-doubles in laboratories of displacement and loopholes for externalization. Driven by increasingly blurred lines between technological, humanitarian and financial interests, this development has transformative effects on both those displaced, and on a humanitarian sector tasked with safeguarding their rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In reviewing the sweep of the extant literature over the past century or so, we first define and present an overview and conceptual synthesis of the field of conflict economics with a special view toward the subfield of peace economics. We explain that standard textbook economics is a special case of conflict economics and discuss assumptions, subject matter, and interrelations between economics and conflict. We also briefly discuss the nature of the peace and security good, including transboundary and transgenerational aspects. Second, focusing on new research opportunities arising from behavioral, identity, and social network economics we identify entire branches of economic theory that have been little harvested as yet to help address important aspects of conflict and peace. We provide illustrative models, each tied to economics' standard rational choice setup. Third, we reflect on the use of conflict-related datasets in empirical research, illustrated with examples pertaining to data validity, missing data, data merging, and data mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knut Wicksell's opinion that political economy is a "thoroughly revolutionary programme" has often been neglected in the literature. Actually, Wicksell aimed at implementing such a programme in order to enlarge political economy as a "practical science". It is articulated around three main features: a criticism of the marginal theories, the redefinition of society as a whole, and the advent of social justice. Indeed, Wicksell claimed that economic and social problems may be solved only by a complete social reorganisation. Hence, I show that Wicksell's social reform programme drives his particular view of and approach to political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal practices of local actors in Kosovo have been harshly criticised by international statebuilding actors. However, it would be short sighted to ignore the role of informal practices of international actors in the post-conflict political economy. Working with a qualitative political economy framework, which focuses on the emergence of the socioeconomic post-war order, I argue that we can observe a range of impactful informal practices of international actors in key socio-economic fields. Instead of solely focusing on local informality, we have to trace informal practices of international actors and assess their role in the formation of peace economies. [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]

One of the focuses of language revitalisation policies is to incorporate minority languages into education. Evaluation of new language-of-instruction models is usually based on the increase of minority language speakers. However, it is also important from an educational perspective to study the possible relationship between performance and significant variables such as economic and cultural status (ESCS) or language background. In the context of the Basque Autonomous Community, where three different language-of-instruction models coexist, we analyse data from a diagnostic assessment of mathematics competence administered to 16,993 fourth-grade students. Using multilevel models, the results show an association between linguistic groups and ESCS, and that the relationship is not strong enough to explain performance differences among groups. The research demonstrates the importance of taking linguistic and socioeconomic background into account when comparing academic achievement among language-of-instruction models. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As English skills are being increasingly perceived as valuable human capital, an awareness of inequitable access to the acquisition of this ‘profitable’ language has developed. Although this allegedly unequal access, which can be referred to as the ‘English divide’, is a matter of concern to applied linguists, little research has been conducted on the historical transformation (or maintenance) of the English divide within a specific society. Therefore, this paper examines a historical change in the English divide in Japan as a highly industrialised country through statistical analysis of a large, population-based sample. Results revealed that, with Japan attaining various socioeconomic developments such as reduced income gaps and improvements in educational conditions, some forms of the English divide originating from material gaps have gradually decreased. In contrast, other forms of the English divide that are led by cultural disparities have not decreased at all. Based on these findings, I discuss the inevitable difficulties of tackling the English divide and suggest some possible solutions for creating substantive, rather than formal, equality in English language education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Neighborhood poverty experienced over time by low-income households is a topic of increasing interest and public policy importance. We employ sequence analysis of neighborhood poverty rates to identify distinct patterns among the 18- to 22-year longitudinal residential trajectories of 389 low-income households in the United States who formed households during 1988–1992, as represented in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our most striking finding is the important role of poverty in their first neighborhood to the probability that low-income households ultimately reside in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are a wide variety of neighborhood poverty trajectories that low-income American households experience. However, those with felicitous neighborhood trajectories were almost entirely White households. The majority of Blacks formed households in high-poverty neighborhoods and were unlikely to live in any other sort of neighborhood for the next two decades when they are typically raising children. In addition, both in-place neighborhood changes and residential mobility have likely led to this racial variation in low-income neighborhood trajectories. We contribute to the evidence base about the role of place in perpetuating socioeconomic and racial inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The socio-economic reasoning of the schoolmen originated from heterogeneous roots and influences and developed over centuries. This is reflected in divergent interpretations of scholastic economic thought. Two conceptual coordinates are used to put those discussions into a common perspective: (1) the distinction between agency-sensitive vs. agency-neutral exchange; (2) the divide between intellectualism and voluntarism. While focussing important theological influences on key issues of economic thought, this allows for a critical account of continuity of problems, while at the same time taking seriously the profound transformation of knowledge systems since the scholastic era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Chinese political economy is a dynamic entity constituted by multiple developmental trajectories. Recent debates on two seemingly divergent 'models' in the subnational regions of Chongqing and Guangdong have foregrounded the potential contradictions of this dynamism. While existing research has attempted to evaluate these trajectories as outcomes of elite politics or ideological incommensurability, an overlooked but no less important aspect is the connections between these trajectories, Mao-era regulatory policies and the post-1978 system of reciprocal accountability. Synthesizing empirical materials from policy documents, academic commentaries, statistical data and interviews with planners from China, this paper provides a critical evaluation of these connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to demonstrate to what extent an academic approach that borrows from economics and sociology is heuristic in terms of fully understanding monetary issues. Contrary to authors that consider money to be neutral, this article emphasizes that money is a ‘total social fact’. Hence, it focuses on three meanings of money through the theoretical framework of Schumpeter and various French institutionalists. It also focuses on the Swiss case, which is particularly relevant because money plays a significant role in order for such a country to foster prosperity and create social links. Finally, there is clearly a high usefulness of a pluralistic approach on the monetary issue for heterodox economists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To analyse the changes in eating patterns in Argentina from 1961 to 2011, and to assess changes in overweight and obesity in their socioeconomic and political context, we performed a hierarchical cluster analysis. We used the information from Food Balance Sheets of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation to identify dietary patterns of apparent consumption. Years were grouped into five patterns. The food group with the highest apparent consumption was cereals (30% of total kcal/person/day) although this decreased slightly. Meats were second and their contribution decreased by 12%. The following foods contribution increased during the period: Sugar and milk by 2% and vegetable oils by 6%. The changes observed in the number of kcal/person/day were in line with changes in real wage, and coincided with economic and political crises that Argentina experienced during that period. Changes in eating patterns allow us to interpret that they relate to the increase in overweight and obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the national consolidation process in Argentina, throughout the nineteenth century, a new map of local power was designed based on appropriated territories and the consolidation of ‘internal frontiers’ denominated ‘desert’ by hegemonic discourses. The indigenous presence was denied discursively, yet military crusades of extermination, and a very massive process of labour incorporation of these groups was forced in order to develop the incipient agribusiness activity in certain areas of the country. This article explores life conditions and resistance strategies developed by the indigenous kolla communities, victims of the exploitation performed by the owners of the San Martín de Tabacal Sugar Mill, located in Salta, northwestern Argentina, throughout the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of process tracing in areas like social, political and economy systems. It mentions that process tracing brings political scientists and political economists closer to historians in their methodological choices. It also highlights the difference between analytic traditions in political science and political economy.

The construction of the Bui Dam was expected to boost socio-economic development in Ghana. This article examines the impacts of the project on the livelihoods of the local people. Data were collected using a mixed-research approach and a case-study design. The study finds that, while there have been significant improvements with respect to resettlement and compensation issues as compared to the earlier dam projects in Ghana, there are still some shortfalls. It is recommended that agriculture be improved by providing extension services and inputs to improve food security and the economic status of the local people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years a debate has emerged about the conditions under which justiciable legal frameworks facilitate the fulfilment of socioeconomic rights. This debate has pitted institutionalist perspectives that emphasise the progressive potential of democratisation against structuralist perspectives that emphasise the constraints imposed by relationships of power and interest. This paper considers the debate in light of Indonesia’s recent experience. It suggests that we need to examine how institutional and structural factors interac twithin particular contexts to shape socioeconomic rights fulfilment, not examine these factors in isolation. It also considers the strategic implications of this argument for rights proponents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study analyses the contribution of relevant economic actors to the provision of private and public goods in agricultural landscapes. A method consisting of a multi-sectoral perspective and an integrated approach based on the analytic network process (ANP) and the use of selected local stakeholders is applied. The usefulness of the method is demonstrated in three European case studies in Austria, Italy and Spain. The results show that agriculture and tourism are the sectors that contribute the most and the least, respectively, to the provision of goods and services in agricultural landscapes. Moreover, the results underscore that policy instruments towards such provision need to be targeted differently in different areas and must take into account the different roles of the local actors involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Third-sector political theatre is thought of in connection with socio-political goals or structural decay. Socio-political goals encompass coverage of topics that engage with an array of crucial issues through performances, and the promotion of wider participation in such performances among many others. In committing to these imperatives, political theatre in the third sector is considered to facilitate democratic practice and drive social change. Owing to changing socio-political and socio-economic circumstances, ascendant imperatives of a professional, artistic and commercial nature now equally influence the making of political theatre in the third sector, the interaction of which poses significant problems for producers. To add to this, producers are confronted with subsidy-related pressures and face up to these challenges in ways that have not been sufficiently researched. Drawing on perspectives from the political economy of communication tradition, the sociology of cultural production and other relevant literature, and using ethnographic and case study research, I address this gap by analysing how producers negotiate the different imperatives and respond to pressures from subsidy. My two key arguments are that political theatre in this sector is more prevalent than is often acknowledged, and that sustainable funding strategies are required to support its socio-political effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of marketization denotes the expansion of market coordination into non-market coordinated social domains as well as its intensification in already market-dominated settings. This article sets out to reconstruct an institutionalist theory of marketization. As a point of departure, it critically examines the related contributions of Karl Polanyi and Jürgen Habermas. The analytical strength of Polanyi's theory of marketization lies in the discussion of the contested embeddedness of markets and the view of marketization as a politically shaped process of institutional change. This concern with the societal expansion of markets is further developed in the Habermasian thesis of the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’. However, both Polanyi and Habermas lack a specification of the social substance of markets and thus tend to underestimate the complexity of marketization. To address this issue, the present article utilizes the concept of collective goods to introduce new arguments about the institutional dynamics of marketization in the diverse fields of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementing the newly recognized human right to water (HRtW) poses a variety of challenges for states and raises questions for researchers about how to evaluate the fulfillment of the right. This article sheds light on these questions by exploring the HRtW in Bolivia, a global symbol for HRtW campaigns. The article explores the Bolivian government's approach to implementing the HRtW and evaluates the fulfillment of the right based on access and investment levels, changes to institutions, and analysis of the sociopolitical context in which these changes take place. While the Bolivian state is progressively realizing the HRtW by global standards of access and investment levels, the broader criteria for the HRtW, including citizen participation and democratic decision making, remain largely unfulfilled. This case suggests that, while building state capacity to fulfill socioeconomic rights is key to rights fulfillment, pathways of horizontal and vertical accountability must also be built and strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Kaoko, north-west Namibia, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia was the background to the local experience of colonialism and South African rule, a period that is locally remembered for the smell of putrefaction spread by animals bearing the disease. This article investigates what this smell tells us about the particular modalities of colonial rule in this remote borderland. By means of two case studies, it argues that in this particular context creating and sustaining a “state of ambiguity” was a social and political strategy engaged in by coloniser and colonised alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Botswana embarked on privatisation in 2000 but the programme is yet to be implemented. The objectives of privatisation are to promote citizen economic empowerment and to benefit all. Admittedly, these are well-intended objectives. However, we pose a question: ‘How are these objectives going to be achieved?’ To answer this question, this paper audits the Privatisation Policy of Botswana and Privatisation Master Plan to assess the extent to which they are gender inclusive, and concludes that they are gender blind and do not address the gender dimensions of privatisation. The paper also reviews secondary data such as poverty maps and concludes that women suffer socio-economic disenfranchisement and would not equally benefit from privatisation. In addition, women would disproportionately suffer its adverse effects. For privatisation to produce fair outcomes, there is a need to make it gender inclusive. Making it gender inclusive would ensure the participation and empowerment of socio-economic minorities such as women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heightened interest in large-scale foreign agricultural investment in regions with ‘unused’ arable land has triggered a great deal of international attention. Concerns about ‘land grabbing’ have initiated efforts at the global level to establish standards for ‘responsible investment’ and good governance. These initiatives warrant critical examination given the social, political, and economic inequalities to which they are designed to respond, yet the scholarship on these initiatives frequently fails to incorporate gendered analyses. This article argues that gendered analysis of the governance of land grabs not only belongs at the local level—where it continues to yield important insights into how gender inequality is manifested in various forms of local governance—but that it is sorely needed at the global level as well. As such, this article begins an assessment of these governance frameworks and how they consider local realities, with particular attention to gender-based inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Territorial capital is defined as the system of territorial assets of economic, cultural, social and environmental nature that ensures the development potential of places. The potential of this concept resides in the recognition of possible interactions between factors of different nature. So far, however, very few studies have focused on the empirical verification of the links between territorial capital and economic growth. This work is devoted to the analysis of the relationship between economic growth and territorial capital in Italian NUTS3 regions between 1999 and 2008. The distribution of territorial assets across regions points out the huge gap between Italian macro-areas. These divergences do not clearly reproduce the differentials in GDP growth. The second part of the analysis is focused on the joint effect of the territorial capital components on the regional economic performance. Our findings emphasize the role of some endogenous factors in explaining the differentiation of regional growth patterns. Moreover, they point out the importance of soft assets in correspondence of an external shock, as the one represented by the recent financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Seven decades after its first publication, Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation remains one of the most insightful readings about the socioeconomic changes associated with the Industrial Revolution, and the ways in which law facilitated, or countered, moves towards the commodification of land at that time. As today’s global land rush brings competing land claims into contest, new transitions are occurring between more commodified and more ‘socially embedded’ conceptualisations of land. Using Polanyi’s framework, this article analyses the role of international law in these processes. International investment law construes land as a commercial asset, can facilitate access to land for foreign investors and imposes discipline on the exercise of regulatory powers in land matters. But shifts in the political economy that underpins international investment law and growing recourse to international human rights law are creating new opportunities for reflecting the non-commercial (cultural, social, political) relations within which land rights remain embedded in many societies. When contrasting conceptualisations of land collide, the relative strength of legal rights and enforcement mechanisms become particularly important. Ultimately, the legitimacy of international law to mediate between competing land claims will depend on the extent to which it can recognise the multiple values that society attaches to land. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper has two main objectives. First, to address the problematic of the socioeconomic impact of land deals in sub-Saharan Africa by looking at what we know from the available literature so far, namely what has been claimed and how much research has been done, as well as why we do not know very much despite the quantity of material published. This is done via a systematic scoping review, which aims to avoid some of the biases inherent in conventional literature reviews and to provide evidence for some basic features of the emerging research on land grabs in Africa, with specific reference to their contribution to the understanding of livelihood impacts. Second, the article links empirical questions about the impact and implications of land grabs with a discussion of alternative (neglected) research questions, notably the implications of the current land rush phenomenon for the classic agrarian questions of capital and labour, as understood in agrarian political economy. Thus the paper proposes a re-engagement with debates on the classic agrarian questions in a Marxist political economy tradition in order to move the land grab research agenda towards more conceptually and empirically challenging research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gulf states and sub-Saharan Africa face challenges in progressing beyond trade in agriculture, commodities and cheap labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bamboo is one of the most important non-timber forest products in Bangladesh. Previous research, however, has focused mainly on its silvicultural aspects, with its socio-economic aspects remaining underexplored. In a study conducted between January and March in 2008, we surveyed 30 randomly selected bamboo-based entrepreneurs in a regional market in southern Bangladesh to identify employment and trade patterns, financial contributions, and marketing of bamboo and its products. Bamboo was found to be important in generating profits for entrepreneurs and employment for low-skilled rural workers.Bambusa balcooa,Melocanna baccifera,Bambusa tulda, andBambusa vulgariswere found to be the most traded species, withBambusa balcooaconstituting 39% of the market. Major uses of (secondary products from) bamboo were found to be construction, fences, mats, and domestic baskets and utensils. Operating costs varied across the enterprises according to their sales, workforce size, and purchases. Estimated net average incomes of the large, medium, and small enterprises were around Tk. 43,000 ($625), Tk. 30,000 ($435), and Tk. 19,300 ($280), respectively, during the year 2007. Medium-sized enterprises earned the most (32%) from the sale of secondary products. Three marketing channels were identified, with most of the bamboo in the area being found to be collected through intermediaries. Our discussion highlights the importance of bamboo and its secondary products in generating employment and profits in the area and also the presence of problems such as income variability throughout the year. Promoting the trade of bamboo and bamboo-based enterprises through appropriate technical and financial assistance to growers and entrepreneurs could be an effective strategy to improve local economies in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article accounts for why and how democratisation in Korea, although facilitated by social forces from below, has contributed to deepening social polarisation by accelerating economic liberalisation. In assessing this seemingly paradoxical dynamic of democratisation in Korea, this article offers an analysis of contemporary Korean politics and political economy alternative to currently prevailing approaches. Prevailing approaches tend to frame recent socio-economic and political changes in Korea brought about by democratisation and the financial crisis of 1997-98 as the encroachment of the market over the state, and of the external (the global) over the internal (the national), as if these bipolarised categories assume zero-sum relations. This article posits democratisation processes as class and social struggles and such factors as the global economy, the positioning of Korea in the world-system and the history of US intervention, that are typically perceived as external constituents, as active social and class forces. Informed by this framework, this article explores contemporary Korean politics and political economy as a set of contradictory processes of political and economic liberalisation, democratisation and “de-democratisation.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Earth system is a complex adaptive system, characterised by non-linear change and with significant capacity for surprise. In times of systemic crisis, such as dangerous anthropogenic climate change, perverse resilience (for example the structural power of fossil fuel interests in the global economy) can threaten overall Earth system stability. Critical political economic analysis recognises climate change as a threat with significant political economic characteristics and implications. However, key dimensions of climate change as a globally coherent phenomenon, including the important implications of Earth system dynamism and non-linear change, can remain unrecognised, mischaracterised or underestimated. In contrast, resilience approaches describe social-ecological systems but neglect the significance of norms and power relations in human societies. This article builds theory by linking key concepts – hegemony and resilience – from neo-Gramscian political economic analysis and resilience approaches to social-ecological systems. Our objective is to generate a new conceptual framework to improve understanding of the role of politics in social-ecological systems. We use climate change and its mitigation to demonstrate the new framework's potential. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Data from a sample survey carried out in 2008 in Shanghai and St. Petersburg comparing differences in intergenerational social mobility show that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the scale of upward mobility between the generations in Russia declined. In Shanghai, however, a steady trend toward increased upward mobility was found. Differences in levels of industrial development and growth rates may be seen as the causes of this difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of economic issues that permeate certain aspects of the New Testament narrative world. After critically discussing the proper methodological patterns, the essay explores the possibility of reconstructing the socio-economic world in which these narratives emerged and evolved. We then proceed to assess the economic norms embedded in a rich diversity of New Testament texts, and we analyse how these religious discourses affected the economic attitudes of their respective audiences. To avoid overgeneralization, we properly differentiate the distinctive responses to the problem of economic necessity, in conformity to the particular social setting. We in turn suggest an alternative reading of some economic aspects of these texts; in so doing, we employ theories that advance a new understanding of the ancient economy. Finally, findings are summarized and further propositions are formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Climate change is rapidly becoming the defining feature of the Caribbean developmental landscape. Yet theoretical and practical responses to the issue have been somewhat limited, particularly in terms of the socio-economic and political dimensions. This article begins by tracing the dramatic impact that climate change presages for Caribbean development. It then moves on to an analysis of how the region is attempting to respond at the global, regional and national levels. We then question the significance of this for Pan-Caribbean development, before pointing the way to a nascent research agenda with the political economy of climate change at its heart. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ‘active audience’ has theoretically been conceptualized from two perspectives: in political economy, it is suggested that television audiences work for the networks while watching and that they contribute to the valorization process with their labour. Although contested, it has survived among media scholars, also feeding into the discussion on web surveillance techniques. The other conceptualization comes from reception theory, media ethnography and cultural studies, where the interpretive work by audiences is seen as productive and resulting in identities, taste cultures and social difference. This article relates these perspectives by considering audiences as involved in two production–consumptions circuits: (1) the viewer activities produce social difference (identities and cultural meaning) in a social and cultural economy, which is then (2) made the object of productive consumption as part of the activities of the media industries, the end product being economic profit. This article argues for the relevance of analysing these as separate circuits, with different kinds of labour at their centre, and that recent debates on the active audience often misrecognize the difference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study of all fifty state, high school social studies curriculum standards found a lack of attention in the vast majority of state standards to the federal budget, federal debt, and budget deficit, topics of significant concern. These concepts are important to teaching about economics in the United States since they lie at the center of contemporary debates about the health of the nation's economy and its long-term viability. Our research discovered broad variation among states in the degree of specificity about teaching these economic concepts. We discuss specific ways in which some of the economic concepts found in state social studies standards might be used to infuse content about federal budget, federal debt, and budget deficit into high school social studies courses, critical topics in light of contemporary debates about the future of American entitlement programs and the federal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research examines the ecological relationship between income inequality and mortality, and results are inconclusive. This analysis builds upon these findings by implementing a spatially weighted path analysis to better understand the mediating relationships of economic and social inequality, health infrastructure, and mortality. In the analysis, overall and race-specific mortality rates are combined with local health infrastructure data, income inequality and racial segregation data, and a series of ecological controls to undertake this examination. Ultimately, findings show that income inequality is a stronger determinant of mortality than is segregation, for whites and blacks, regardless of the existing health infrastructure. We also find racial disparities in the direct effect of local health infrastructure on mortality. In contrast to previous literature suggesting no association between income inequality and mortality after accounting for race and model sophistication, we argue that the significance of the relationship persists using race-specific, spatially weighted path models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on aspects of strategic influences which effects the thinking and actions and serves. It discusses several topics including inability to measure strategic influence, enumerating financial and economic strengths, military forces and capabilities and role of economics in strategic influence. It also talks about relationship between economics and political science and international strategy which are important part of psychology and its bedfellow expectations which considers attitudes and confidence.

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has seldom been read as an explicitly political text. When it has, it appears that the central character was designed to warn the early eighteenth-century reader against political challenges to the existing economic order. Insofar as Defoe's Crusoe stands for ‘economic man’, he is a reflection of historically produced assumptions about the need for social conformity, not the embodiment of any genuinely essential economic characteristics. This insight is used to compare Defoe's conception of economic man with that of the neoclassical Robinson Crusoe economy. On the most important of the ostensibly generic principles espoused by neoclassical theorists, their ‘Robinson’ has no parallels with Defoe's Crusoe. Despite the shared name, two quite distinct social constructions serve two equally distinct pedagogical purposes. Defoe's Crusoe extols the virtues of passive middle-class sobriety for effective social organisation; the neoclassical Robinson champions the establishment of markets for the sake of productive efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature on the persistence or transformation of economic models frequently evokes the role of politics. However, such publications rarely set out precisely what politics is and how it plays out within specific sites of economic activity, particularly individual industries. In order to show that politics is the cause of both change within industries and difference between them, this article develops an institutionalist framework of analysis which seeks to elucidate the ‘thickness’ of the relationship between economic and political activities. Politics is first conceptualized in a way that opens up for research the emergence and evolution of the institutions which constrain and make industrial activity possible: behaviour that both discursively and interactively seeks to change or reproduce institutions by mobilizing values. Building upon existing institutionalist approaches in political economy and economic sociology, but also constructivist strands of political science, this definition is then used to set out a research design with which to conduct in-depth empirical study of the ‘political work’ undertaken within industries that lie behind perpetual processes of institutionalization. This work, and the intermediary concepts developed to study it – problematization and politicization – are illustrated throughout the piece by examples from two industries: automobile distribution and wine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public reports in the media prior to EURO 2008 hailed the economic impact of hosting the event on the national economy. Whereas in the USA spectator sports have been frequently used as a device for drawing public expenditures and subsidies over the greater half of the past century, in the regional context of Europe and the focus of football such argumentations have a much shorter history, dating back to the recent football mega-events of the twenty-first century. Sports mega-events such as as the Olympic Games and the football World Cup have grown over the years and have thereby changed into commercial events, dominated by the power of satellite television and corporate interests. In comparison, the European Football Championships are much more limited in scope, yet we argue that their recent growth is based on the same socio-economic changes. Why economic issues have become so important for contemporary sports mega-events is a central question of this article. In an attempt to answer it, we take a critical look at several economic forecast studies and compare their assertions with the appreciation of the football event after its ending in Austria. We argue that the media, crucial actors of the 'sports-media-business alliance', played a leading role in the construction of the event's bonanza image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both J. S. Mill and A. Marshall had a lifelong interest in the living conditions of the working classes and theorized the possibility of a new age, characterized by a widespread mental and moral cultivation. This paper compares the precise arguments put forward by them in the period ranging from Mill's to Marshall's Principles, against the background of the evidence of social and human progress at their times. It is argued that, at different stages and with different specific arguments, their predictions relied on self-reinforcing mechanisms, in which a better life was the cause, no less than the effect, of progress. In order to make similarities and differences more transparent from a logical point of view, two simple mathematical formulations are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper for this special issue (Ruhs, 2010), which builds on analysis in a previous paper with Phil Martin (Ruhs and Martin, 2008), suggests the hypothesis of a trade-off (i.e. an inverse relationship) between the number and some of the socio-economic rights of low-skilled migrant workers admitted to high-income countries. Ruhs (2010) discusses the economic factors and mechanisms that may give rise to such a trade-off and presents several brief case studies that, I argue, provide some illustrative empirical support for the existence of a trade-off. As I make clear in the conclusion, there is 'clearly a need for more systematic empirical research that includes a larger number of countries and that investigates alternative explanations of the relationship between the number and rights of low-skilled migrant workers admitted to high-income countries' (Ruhs, 2010, p. 276) The paper by Cummins and Rodriguez (C&R, 2010) aims to provide this systematic empirical analysis. C&R conclude that their statistical tests 'do not on the whole support the existence of a numbers versus rights trade-off in immigration policy' (2010, p. 283). The authors emphasize that the measurement of migrant rights and immigration policies is still at a nascent stage and that future assessments and better data 'could, in turn, lead us to re-evaluate the conclusions presented in this paper' (p. 298). I consider the analysis by C&R unconvincing as a systematic empirical test of the numbers versus rights hypothesis for two reasons, namely: their conceptualization and measurement of the number of migrant workers in the context of this debate, and the indices used to measure the rights of migrant workers. I conclude with an outline of the systematic empirical analysis needed to advance the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses black racial formation in contemporary times. The author states that financial global racial capitalism has brought African Americans into a state much like their situation during the period known as the Nadir (1877-1917). The author argues that this is because of the marginalization of black workers and an escalation in incarceration. As examples, the author examines the suppression of black voters in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, the catastrophe caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the housing foreclosures caused by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in 2008.

Zimbabwe gained political independence in 1980, but the initial achievements of Robert Mugabe's government were short-lived. Zimbabwean Christians have responded to the country's crisis in various ways, including: avoiding political engagement, moral indifference, aggression and hostility, and prophetic engagement. Christians who pursue prophetic engagement believe that stubborn political authorities must always be confronted and held accountable-but in a manner that does not lose sight of the moral ends being pursued. Zimbabwean churches have a moral duty to contribute to the creation of a social, economic, political, and cultural context that facilitates the growth and fulfillment of every person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a period of 15 years, one third of the population of Albania emigrated, mainly to Greece and Italy. The main compensation for this loss has been the inflow of remittances. In many cases, Albanian emigrants have chosen to use informal means for remitting and have proved to be reluctant to use their savings on productive investment. Therefore, analysing their savings and remitting attitudes is very important in terms of policy formulation and implementation. Albanian emigrants represent a very heterogeneous group. Their characteristics differ in terms of their educational level, marital status, age and regional origin. Economic theory suggests that such differences may be associated with substantial differences in emigrants' attitudes towards saving, investing and remitting money to their families. On the basis of the findings of a study sponsored by the International Organization for Migration, this paper uses exploratory data analysis in order to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of the Albanian migrants and their savings, investing and remitting attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, anti-Semitism emerged as a mass phenomenon in the Russian public debate. Various explanations have been provided to account for the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment: religious bigotry; racism; state policy; and class enmity. The present article agrees with the class enmity approach that socio-economic factors were most important, but in contrast argues that Russian anti-Semitism was generated not by a confrontation between two different classes; instead, the main impetus was economic competition within the same social segments. This can be shown through a close reading of contemporary Russian anti-Semitic texts. Their authors often complained that the Jews exploited poor Russians by charging extortionate prices for their goods, but a closer look reveals that much more often the opposite charge was levied: that the Jews were selling their goods too cheaply. This was a problem, of course, not for the Jews' customers, but for their competitors. As the socio-economic position of the Russian Jews changed so did the social support bases of Russian anti-Semitism. When the Jews began to take higher education and qualified for ever new professions, pressure was building up to restrict their entry into high schools and universities. Finally, the article explores the possibilities of employing the job competition thesis to account for anti-Semitism and related phenomena at other times and in other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]