Search

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

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

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

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

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