Journal of Economic Issues articles from June 1995

Journal of Economic Issues archives from June 1995

The making of a relativist and social constructivist: remarks upon receiving the Veblen-Commons Award. (economist Warren J. Samuels)(Transcript)
June 1, 1995... My major professor at the University of Wisconsin, Edwin Witte, occasionally remarked that all people like to be well thought of by their peers. So do I. That I now receive the Veblen-Commons Award of the Association for Evolutionary Economics...

Instrumentalist policymaking: policy criteria in a transactional context.
June 1, 1995... As an extension of my recent policymaking chapter, Institutionalist Policymaking [Hayden 1993, 283-331], this paper deals with policy criteria in an instrumentalist or pragmatist framework. The works of Charles Peirce and Thorstein Veblen...

Transaction cost theories of business enterprise from Williamson and Veblen: convergence, divergence, and some evidence.
June 1, 1995... The purpose of this paper is to compare theories of firms and mergers offered by Oliver Williamson and Thorstein Veblen. Williamson elaborated Coase's theory of the finn into a transaction cost framework that resembles Veblen's approach in some...

Institutional economics and neoclassicism in the early twentieth century: the role of physics.
June 1, 1995... Theoretical physics was in revolutionary fervor during the first quarter of the twentieth century: quantum physics, the special and general theories of relativity, a theory of the inner workings of the atom, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle,...

Culture: core concept reaffirmed.
June 1, 1995... Two central insights guide inquiry in institutional economics. One, not unique to institutionalism, is that the purpose of inquiry is to produce causal explanations and guide efficacious action. The second is that all human behavior and knowledge...

International trade and child labor.
June 1, 1995... Child labor has emerged as a serious, widespread, and growing problem in many parts of the world. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that at least 115 million children under the age of 15 are employed worldwide [ILO 1993]. In...

Reassessing comparative advantage: the impact of capital flows on the argument for laissez-faire.
June 1, 1995... The theory of comparative advantage is one of the oldest, and judged by its widespread acceptance, one of the most successful theories in the history of economic doctrines. The essential attributes of the theory of comparative advantage are...

Technology and the terms of trade: considering expectational, structural, and institutional factors.
June 1, 1995... Too often, heterodox critics argue against generalized free trade on the basis of (1) the existence of rigidities, (2) the negative impact on an economic subgroup-like particular industries or workers, and (3) supra- economic considerations such...

The old and new institutionalism: can bridges be built?
June 1, 1995... The old and the new institutionalism are both programs of research that arose out of a concern with the almost complete lack of consideration given to institutions in conventional neoclassical economics. That institutions matter in shaping...

Douglass C. North's new institutionalism.
June 1, 1995... Along with Oliver E. Williamson and other new institutionalists, Douglass C. North changed some of the neoclassical assumptions about economic rationality and emphasized the importance of transaction cost minimization. North and his colleagues...

Institutions and the significance of relative prices.
June 1, 1995... Douglass North's recent work traverses much of the gulf that separates so-called old institutional economics (OIE) and new institutional economics (NIE). To elaborate this assertion, I focus on the particular issue of the significance of relative...

On integrating new and old institutionalism: Douglass North building bridges.
June 1, 1995... In institutional economics, the explanandum is the institution. Definitions of institution refer to a framework of behavior: institutions direct, channel, or guide behavior. We prefer to distinguish values as the underlying systems of belief...

The impact of financial flows on U.S. investment, 1948-1992: an empirical model of institutional investment theory.
June 1, 1995... The role of investment in contributing to weak and negative GDP growth is well established by Keynesian theory. There are substantial differences among theories of the determinants of investment behavior, however. Post Keynesian models rely on...

The international monetary system and exchange rate determination: 1945 to the present.
June 1, 1995... Increasingly, the foreign exchange market bas become a focus for pecuniary pursuits at the expense of trade and direct investment. Two of the side effects of the increased use of exchange market operations for pecuniary gain have been rate...

Instruments and institutions of industrial policy at the regional level in Germany: the example of industrial defense conversion.
June 1, 1995... Severe structural change, such as that caused by the contraction of the defense industry since the end of the Cold War, often produces high social costs. These costs include the loss of production and system capacities, skills, and key...

Raising environmental consciousness versus creating economic incentives as alternative policies for environmental protection.
June 1, 1995... Protecting the environment means changing people's behavior to reduce human impact on the environment. Neoclassical economists, with their analytical focus on utility maximizing individuals, recommend the creation of monetary incentives that...

Nonprofit organizations and the institutionalist approach.
June 1, 1995... In the 1980s, questions and misgivings about nonprofit organizations prompted an avalanche of social science research that destroyed myths and raised questions that should interest contemporary institutionalists. The new evidence and the models...

The globalization of telecommunications: a study in the struggle to control markets and technology.
June 1, 1995... The telecommunications industry has undergone a technological revolution that has created new markets and new systems of supply and has generally transformed corporate relationships and the institutions for public control. The advent of...

Regulation of on-site medical waste incinerators in the United States and the United Kingdom: is the public interest being served?
June 1, 1995... Currently, the "vast majority of medical waste disposed of in the United States, and indeed the world, is done so via high-temperature incineration" [U.S. Congress, OTA 1990a, 3]. On-site hospital incinerators are quite common in both the United...

Breaking down the walls, opening up the field: situating the economics classroom in the site of social action.
June 1, 1995... The curtain rises on a scene: an introductory economics classroom, where students are sitting in neat rows. The professor begins the class by reminding students that "economics is the study of how scarce resources are allocated among unlimited...

For whom? Institutional economics and distributional issues in the economics classroom.
June 1, 1995... The need to turn our classrooms into a "scene for social action" and to engage our students in the critical analysis of economic problems and policies is perhaps nowhere more urgent than in the area of distributional issues. Yet, such issues are...

Varieties of capitalism from the perspectives of Veblen and Marx.
June 1, 1995... The Economist proclaimed on December 26, 1992, that "the collapse of communism brought universal agreement that there was no serious alternative to free-market capitalism as the way to organise economic life." What has emerged is the view that we...

The origins of capitalist markets: transition in Poland with comparisons to East Asian capitalism.
June 1, 1995... The main concern of this paper is the role of government in the birth and development of industrial capitalism. Does the emergence of "proper institutional arrangements" allow for the birth of a modern market economy, or alternatively must...

The onset and persistence of secular stagnation in the U.S. economy: 1910-1990.
June 1, 1995... Examination of the rate of total output growth over the last century reveals a surprising break in trend around 1910. Before this time, the annual rate substantially exceeded 4 percent a year. However, using John Kendrick's real GNP data reported...

A New Year's Keynesian wish: advice to Clinton in the aftermath of November 1994.
June 1, 1995... With the "resounding" GOP victory in November 1994, political pundits advised President Clinton to move further right and to embrace economic policies that failed repeatedly over the past two decades. They urged Clinton to denounce purportedly...

Bargaining models, feminism, and institutionalism.
June 1, 1995... Many feminist economists have argued that neoclassical economics is woefully inadequate for inquiry into the economic lives of women. The neoclassical emphasis on "choice" is misleading, they say: neoclassical accounts tend to pay too little...

Female-headed families on AFDC: who leaves welfare quickly and who doesn't. (Aid to Families With Dependent Children)
June 1, 1995... As national policymakers once again contemplate welfare reform, one of the measures being discussed would place limits on the amount of time that a family could receive benefits from Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), the nation's...

Child care choice in a lexicographic framework.
June 1, 1995... This theoretical paper explores a lexicograpbic model of child care choice and argues that this model is better suited to analyzing parental demand for child care than a neoclassical choice model. The focus in a lexicographic approach is the...

Health reform and the legal-economic nexus.
June 1, 1995... In this paper, we interpret the health system's litany of problems, including high costs, lack of access, inequality, and reform's repeated failure, in terms of institutionalist theory about the legal-economic nexus. The litany of problems is...

Evolutionary economics in Russia: report on a conference.
June 1, 1995... A symposium titled "Evolutionary Approach and Problems of Transitional Economy" was held in Puschino,(1) Russia, September 12-15, 1994, which was sponsored by the Institute of Economics and the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute of the...