Journal of Economic Issues articles from December 1996

Journal of Economic Issues archives from December 1996

Development, gender, and the environment: theoretical or contextual link? Toward an institutional analysis of gender.
December 1, 1996... The current discourse on development, gender, and the environment has emerged from a convergence of feminist and environmentalist critiques of economic development.(1) This discourse is dominated by two paradigms: Women in Development (WID) and...

Decision tools for public policy: can we do without economics?
December 1, 1996... An important issue in the analysis of economic systems is that of policy intervention to improve, in some sense, how such systems function. The issue has taken on increasing urgency in recent years as economic, social, and environmental pressures...

Holism and collectivism in the work of J.R. Commons.
December 1, 1996... Recent years have witnessed a considerable resurgence of interest in institutional economics, much of which has been generated by contributions going under the heading of "new institutional economics."(1) Although it is difficult to impose any...

Taylorism, John R. Commons, and the Hoxie report.
December 1, 1996... Frederick Winslow Taylor and the scientific management movement are linked in popular consciousness with the deskilling and systematic disempowering of workers. This association has caused difficulty for analysts who are aware that many pro-labor...

Modeling institutional change: some critical thoughts.
December 1, 1996... This paper addresses neoinstitutionalist theories about institutional change in one important school as summarized by Paul D. Bush [1987].(1) The intent is not an exhaustive critique, but identification of problematic ideas. There are three major...

Capabilities, routines, and East European economic reform: Hungary and Poland before and after the 1989 revolutions.
December 1, 1996... The transformation from centrally planned economies to market-based economies appears to be a complicated process. Much attention has been paid to such macroeconomic aspects as price liberalization, stabilization, and privatization. The limits to...

Macroeconomic policy in a transitional environment: Romania, 1989-1994.
December 1, 1996... When I finished reading the novel 1984, by George Orwell, I asked myself if there existed anything worse, more deprived, more inhuman than a fixed life set definitively in misery and terror? I believe that even then I had the answer in mind,...

Polarities between naturalism and non-naturalism in contemporary economics: an overview.
December 1, 1996... Set in the context of the philosophy of the social sciences, this paper draws out polarities between competing tendencies in contemporary academic economics. It explores how naturalistic and non-naturalistic frameworks of thinking about economics...

The origins of the a priori method in classical political economy: a reinterpretation.
December 1, 1996... It is well known that the American institutionalists, and their predecessors in the English and German Historical schools, defined their research program as fundamentally opposed to the a priori tendencies that were, and still are, the mainstay...

A rhetorical conception of practical rationality.
December 1, 1996... . . . Just when I thought I couldn't stand it another minute longer, Friday came. (Accounts of that have everything all wrong.) Friday was nice. Friday was nice, and we were friends. If only he had been a woman! I wanted to propagate my kind, and...

The deja vu of EMU: considerations for Europe from nineteenth century America. (economic and monetary union)
December 1, 1996... If achieved, the creation of an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the European Union (EU) would certainly be historic, but it would not be without precedent. The histories of both nineteenth century Germany and Italy provide examples of...

Some responses to Jennings and Waller. (response to Ann L. Jennings and William Waller, Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 29, p. 407, June 1995)
December 1, 1996... While flattered by the attention paid to me in their recent essay [Jennings and Waller 1995], I am not convinced that Jennings and Waller are responding to what I actually wrote in my Economics and Evolution. They offer no quotations or page...

Cultural emergence reaffirmed: a rejoinder to Hodgson. (response to Geoffrey Hodgson on this issue, p. 1163)
December 1, 1996... It is refreshing to receive a reply to our work in print, however Geoffrey Hodgson's present response seems disproportional to our original argument. Hodgson's recent work [Economics and Evolution 1993; later unattributed page numbers refer to...

Extending William M. Dugger's changing concepts of inquiry: Ayers Brinser on the continuation of progress.
December 1, 1996... In his excellent paper, "Veblenian Institutionalism: The Changing Concepts of Inquiry," William M. Dugger [1995] includes the continuation of progress as one concept of inquiry. My note suggests an extension to that concept, attributable to Ayers...

Economists, Parsifal, and the search for the Holy Grail.
December 1, 1996... Like Parsifal, the modern economist naively blunders about the Waste Land in search of the Holy Grail. Cynicism and despair reign in the discipline. The many versions of Parsifal share a few basic themes that are, at least in part, played out in...

Education and attainment of members of the Council of Economic Advisers, 1946-91.
December 1, 1996... The Employment Act of 1946 made it the federal government's duty to "promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power" and gave the president responsibility to design and recommend specific policies toward this general goal. To help...

Ownership and Control: Rethinking Corporate Governance for the Twenty-First Century.
December 1, 1996... These books deal with issues of corporate control and corporate governance from a historical as well as a current perspective. Since they complement as well as support each other, when read together they provide a better and more comprehensive...

Managers vs. Owners: The Struggle for Corporate Control in American Democracy.
December 1, 1996... These books deal with issues of corporate control and corporate governance from a historical as well as a current perspective. Since they complement as well as support each other, when read together they provide a better and more comprehensive...

Poverty and Power: The Role of Institutions and the Market in Development.
December 1, 1996... This book is a collection of case studies written by members of the International Labor Organization's (ILO) Asian Regional Team for Employment Promotion (ARTEP). The case studies cover the 1980s and the early 1990s. The writings share a view of...

Innovation, Economics and Evolution: Theoretical Perspectives on Changing Technology in Economic Systems.
December 1, 1996... Hall's book is an attempt to bring together much modern economic analysis on the nature of technological change and economic evolution. I opened it in the expectation that it could be an ideal textbook for a masters course I teach on the...

Latin America's Economic Development: Confronting Crisis, 2nd ed.
December 1, 1996... This excellent collection of readings on Latin America is the second edition of an earlier work with the same title but with a different subtitle and without a co-editor. The 1987 volume was titled Latin America's Economic Development:...

The Coming of Keynesianism to America: Conversations with the Founders of Keynesian Economics.
December 1, 1996... David Colander and his co-author, Harry Landreth, via the reporting of "conversations," have rendered a great service to the economics profession by providing a written record on how Keynesianism came to America. As early as the 1950s, Sidney...

The Political Economy of Full Employment: Conservatism, Corporatism and Institutional Change.
December 1, 1996... A fundamental element that sets the various heterodox schools in economics apart from the myriad of orthodox perspectives is the belief that significant unemployment can be - and frequently is - a persistent phenomenon within capitalist economies...

The Sociology of Money: Economics, Reason and Contemporary Society.
December 1, 1996... Nigel Dodd has attempted to achieve a "coherent sociological approach to money" and to investigate money's "importance as a consequential social institution" [p. vi]. In Part 1 of the book, Dodd surveys the work of major social theorists,...

The Mechanisms of Governance.
December 1, 1996... The double - even triple - meaning of this title is fascinating. Those not familiar with the works of the author, or with the expanding powers of the modern corporation, might take the title to indicate a work in political science. But a glance...

Power Theory of Economics.
December 1, 1996... This book consists of major portions, selected and translated by Michio Morishima, from Takata's Theory of Power [1940] and Essays in the Power Theory of Economics [1941]. It is one volume in a series of translations of lesser-known, non-English...

The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era.
December 1, 1996... A recent cartoon depicted two men at a bar recalling the 1950s when people welcomed a future in which machines would do all the work. One of them affirms that those days have indeed arrived. The other agrees but wonders why folks back then...

Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880-1920.
December 1, 1996... This excellent book examines the protective labor legislation movement that dominated discussions of social policy in the Western industrialized world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Protective labor legislation is often...

Reinventing Marxism.
December 1, 1996... A number of books, a journal, and conferences on rethinking or reinventing Marxism have come out in recent years; this is part of the process of diversification of Marxist schools. Some of the new schools have combined with some non-Marxist...