Journal of Economic Issues articles from June 1996

Journal of Economic Issues archives from June 1996

Uncertainty and the institutional structure of capitalist economies: remarks upon receiving the Veblen-Commons award.(Transcript)
June 1, 1996... Remarks Upon Receiving the Veblen-Commons Award There seems to me to be no other economist with whose general way of thinking I feel myself in such genuine accord. - John Maynard Keynes in a letter to John R. Commons [Keynes 1927] The...

Immigration policy and the U.S. economy: an institutional perspective.
June 1, 1996... By virtue of events that have already transpired and public policies already in place, the 1990s will witness the largest inflow of immigrants into the population and labor force of the United States of any decade in the nation's history. The...

In defense of the minimum wage.
June 1, 1996... Contrary to the "conventional wisdom," there are at least three constructive outcomes that can be anticipated from an increase in the minimum wage. First, the minimum wage, through its impact on the distribution of income, has a positive impact...

Basic income, inequality, and unemployment: rethinking the linkage between work and welfare.
June 1, 1996... In the General Theory, John Maynard Keynes wrote: "The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes" [Keynes 1936,...

Transactions, circuits, and identity: proposing a conceptual network.
June 1, 1996... The purpose of this article is to create a conceptual network capable of simplifying the analysis of the relationship between micro decisions and macro coordination. In order to do this, the ideas of classical and contemporary authors will be...

Is a transaction a transaction?
June 1, 1996... For almost two decades now, scholars rooted in the "old" institutional economics (OIE) have watched with great interest, and perhaps some envy as well, as the "new" institutional economics (NIE) has taken root within the economics profession and...

Sovereignty in transaction cost economics: John R. Commons and Oliver E. Williamson.
June 1, 1996... This paper compares and contrasts the concept of sovereignty as developed by the founder of transaction cost economics, John R. Commons, and as later rediscovered and redeveloped by Oliver E. Williamson [Dugger 1979, 1980, 1983, 1987, 1990,...

New institutionalism, old institutionalism, and distribution theory.
June 1, 1996... To theorize about observed reality, one must abstract. This process of abstraction requires making leaps of faith about the nature of the observed interrelationships in that reality. These leaps of faith become embodied in implicit and explicit...

Stock markets, rentier interest, and the current Mexican crisis.
June 1, 1996... The current financial crisis in Mexico has focused attention on the risks for investors of investing in volatile emerging markets.(1) However, there has been little, if any, attention paid to the real risks to developing countries posed by...

Mexico: financial fragility or structural crisis?
June 1, 1996... Orthodox interpretations of Mexico's 1995 crisis have centered on (1) exchange rate policies, (2) the timing, magnitude, and missteps of the devaluation of the peso, and more recently, (3) the failure of monetary policy in setting an interest...

Comparative risk analysis: limitations and opportunities.
June 1, 1996... Risk analysis is the study of the likelihood that an agent or hazard will produce an unwelcome outcome or "adverse effect" and the severity of that adverse effect. Having jelled into a distinct discipline only about a quarter century ago, risk...

The influence of economic thought on the political economy of modern Japan.
June 1, 1996... Along with strengthening production through comprehensive economic planning based on free enterprise and respect for individual initiative and responsibility, we seek to strengthen social security policies, to bring about full employment and a...

The new economic nationalism and the "Japanese Disease": the conundrum of managed economic growth.
June 1, 1996... The Japanese economy has been on a wild roller coaster ride. Confidence was high at the end of the 1980s and the stock markets were booming. But the economy is now straggling to come out of recession. Moreover, the banking industry is faltering....

Some recent innovations in international finance: different faces of risk management and control.
June 1, 1996... In this paper, I will deal with derivatives, instruments that not only have been embodied in many new financial products and services in the last two decades, but also have had a large impact on the financial management both of banks and of other...

Long-term exchange rate movements: the role of the fundamentals in neoclassical models of exchange rates.
June 1, 1996... The central theme of the neoclassical approach to exchange rates has been that currency prices are determined by the "fundamentals," or those variables that guarantee the efficient operation of the foreign exchange market. This has remained the...

Regulation and differences in financial institutions.
June 1, 1996... Some regulation of financial markets is accepted even in these dirigiste times and even by those neoclassical economists who find it a struggle to explain why the market for money is different from the market for peanuts. Monetary regulation...

The social construction of the distribution of income and health.
June 1, 1996... According to the Census Bureau, 1994 continued a 25-year trend of widening income inequality. The latest figures show that the income share for the richest 20 percent of Americans rose to 49.3 percent, while the poorest 20 percent have seen their...

Central bank austerity policy, zero-inflation targets, and productivity growth in Canada.
June 1, 1996... Should central banks fight inflation? The Bank of Canada surely believes so. While high levels of employment and economic growth are said to be the ultimate objectives, both the Canadian government and the Bank of Canada believe that "the best...

Flying swine: appropriate targets and goals of monetary policy.
June 1, 1996... Traditionally, economists have thought that monetary policy involves use of too/s (open market operations, discount rates) to hit operating targets (fed funds rate, reserve aggregates) believed to be related to intermediate targets (short-term...

A brief history of work.
June 1, 1996... Even a brief history should begin at the beginning. God said to Adam, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground" [Genesis 2:3]. As a later Adam, Adam Smith, would put it, work was toil and trouble. Even in the...

Achieving coordination in public utility industries: a critique of troublesome options.
June 1, 1996... Public utilities are complex systems of supply that are an integral part of national and global infrastructures. To maximize the overall contribution of resources committed to these systems, it is imperative that an institutional arrangement be...

Coase, costs, and coordination. (economist Ronald Coase)
June 1, 1996... The development of political economy may be attributed to various factors, one of which is surely the need to deal with the problem of coordination - a problem whose import grew with the transition from subsistence economy to the increasing...

Coordination of distribution in a monetary theory of production.
June 1, 1996... Much of the recent work on the theory of the firm originates in Oliver Williamson's use of transaction costs to explain the rise of the modern corporation as a superior organization that permitted more efficient managerial coordination of...

Learning and routines in high-tech SMEs: analyzing rich case study material.
June 1, 1996... Institutional economics is concerned with the cultural embeddedness of economic institutions. A key institution is the firm, which, like other institutions, is analyzed in a world in which historical time matters and the rationality of the firm...

Diversifying the Alaskan economy: political, social, and economic constraints.
June 1, 1996... As a high school senior, I asked my representative, Don Young, what kind of jobs would be available in Alaska after l finished college. He replied that he saw great prospects in the timber industry, and ignored suggestions from my classmates that...

Urban sprawl as a path dependent process.
June 1, 1996... According to Michael Radzicki and John Sterman, "Path dependency is a characteristic of models that get locked into the particular dynamical path they initially 'choose' (usually by chance)" [Radzicki and Sterman 1994, 64]. When these models...

Economies in transition: hypotheses toward a reasonable economics.
June 1, 1996... A central thesis of this book is that the main goal of the Russian economic transition has been accomplished: Russia has become a market economy. - Anders Aslund, 1995a The truth is that ceremonial and technological considerations are...

An assessment of the transition to a market economy in the Baltic Republics.
June 1, 1996... Contrary to Western perception, the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are not homogeneous; rather, each has a different language, culture, and history.(1) The perception of a common identity is a consequence of fate [Vardys and...