Journal of Economic Issues articles from June 1999

Journal of Economic Issues archives from June 1999

Remarks on Paul Sweezy on the occasion of his receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)(economist)
June 1, 1999... I would like to quote at length from Paul Samuelson, who wrote a piece exactly 30 years ago for Newsweek magazine about a time 30 years before "when giants walked the earth and Harvard Yard": When Diaghilev revived his ballet company he had...

The scope, method, and significance of original institutional economics.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The difference is a difference of spiritual attitude. . . . it is a difference in the basis of valuation of the facts for the scientific purpose, or in the interest from which the facts are appreciated. - Thorstein Veblen, 1898 Veblen...

Institutional economics needs interdisciplinary studies of social studies.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... If we interpret the present age from the viewpoint of the opposing ideologies of socialism and capitalism, we reach the conclusions that the Russian type of socialism should be rejected and that relying on capitalism is now impossible. However,...

Institutional economics at the micro level? What transaction costs theory could learn from Original Institutionalism (in the spirit of building bridges).(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Inertia in the academic environment sometimes obstructs the incorporation and development of some ideas. That is what is claimed in the case of the long gap separating Ronald Coase's seminal paper [1937] that laid the foundations of current...

The convergence of Austrian economics and new institutional economics: methodological inconsistency and political motivations.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The thesis of the paper is that Austrian economics (AE) and new institutional economics (NIE) are methodologically incompatible. This casts doubts on the coherence of the programs that are trying to unite these two branches. The structure of my...

The evolution of economic analysis of law: is pragmatic institutionalism displacing orthodoxy?(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Twenty-five years have passed since the publication of the first edition of Judge Richard A. Posner's influential textbook, Economic Analysis of Law [1973]. Now in its fifth edition, the text remains standard fare in legal education. In fact,...

Thorstein Veblen and 'The Great Gatsby.'.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... F. Scott Fitzgerald's short novel The Great Gatsby is set in the 1920s; like its author, it is strongly identified with the Jazz Age - that temporal slice of self-indulgence sandwiched between the Great War and the Great Depression. Yet...

Poland and Russia one decade after shock therapy.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Poland and Russia present puzzles for both adherents and detractors of rapid economic reform. Shock therapy advocates cite the former's successful economic performance as a vindication of the big bang approach; critics cite the latter's...

A decade of conflicts in Czech economic transformation.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Critics of economic liberalism insist that Western capitalism did not evolve spontaneously through the propelling forces of individual free market initiatives. Accordingly, they argued in the past decade that economic transformation in the...

An institutionalist assessment of structural adjustment programs in Africa.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The failures of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in sub-Saharan Africa have been well documented.(1) In response to these failures, the World Bank has recently adopted a more institutionalist approach to these programs. However, the brand...

Developing global institutions: lessons to be learned from regional integration experiences.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The global economy, we are told, will not only allow the free movement of goods, but services and financial and real capital as well. The flow of information and capital has allowed firms to locate the production of components of final products...

Global neoliberalism, policy autonomy, and international competitive dynamics.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... How has global economic integration affected the ability of national governments to sustain social democratic regimes in order to ensure economic security and some measure of equality? This question is particularly important today because of...

The rise and fall of bank-loan capitalism: institutionally driven growth and crisis in Japan.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... In any market economy, banks play a key role in money creation and investment. They are the single most important intermediary for indirect finance across the world. The securities (such as stocks and bonds) market is also another ubiquitous...

Brothers, can you spare $58 billion? Regulatory lessons from the South Korea currency crisis.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... More than one year after the collapse of the Thai baht set the Asian currency crisis into motion, the resulting economic depression in that region reveals the downside of unfettered capital flows. Filling an institutional void, the...

Globalization and Thailand's financial crisis.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The standard, generic explanations for Asia's financial crisis inadequately explain Thailand's current crisis. Corruption, cronyism, risk taking, and weak bankruptcy/foreclosure laws made Thailand's crisis deeper and longer, but they did not...

Mexico redux? Making sense of the financial crisis of 1997-98.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Beginning in May 1997, financial crisis swept across Southeast Asia and extended to Brazil and Russia. These events are notable because the crisis took investors and International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank officials completely by surprise,...

Toward digital intermediation in the information society.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The new interactive services associated with the development of the Internet seem to promise dramatic changes in the organization of commerce. If this promise is fulfilled through the emergence of digital intermediation, important implications...

Reusing phosphorus: engineering possibilities and economic realities.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Recycling is becoming increasingly important in rich societies both in a physical sense and in the perceptions about desirable changes of economic activity and behavior. In both respects, the significance of recycling is greatest for the raw...

Pollution charges in a transition economy: the case of Russia.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, its legal successor, the Russian Federation, initiated a transformation from a command-based to a market-oriented economy. As part of this process, the government liberalized prices and initiated...

Developing the principles of a managed trade system.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Laissez-faire fails, either as an empirical description of what is or as a normative ideal for what should be, on several grounds. Contrary to classical economics, economies are not self-regulating. History shows that purely private economic...

Wages, productivity, and foreign direct investment flows.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Will an increase in economic openness cause relocation of capital and jobs from high-wage countries to low-wage countries? The standard textbook response is that it will not: low wages reflect low levels of labor productivity and thus provide...

A defense of capital controls in light of the Asian financial crisis.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Capital controls are in fashion once again.(1) In mid-1997, financial panic raced across Asia, putting controls over short-term capital movements back on the political agenda, just as had happened during the crises in the Southern Cone of Latin...

Norms of inequality.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Norms of inequality have been the subject of renewed attention in recent years as explanations have been sought for the trend toward increased wage dispersion in many industrialized countries [see Atkinson 1997; Fortin and Lemieux 1997; Borland...

The impact of globalization on U.S. labor markets: redefining the debate.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The term "globalization" has become the focal point of intense political and economic controversy. On the one hand, globalization in all its forms is presented as a fount of opportunity. The United States has much to gain and little to lose...

Jobs for whom? Employment policy in the United States and Western Europe.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Policies to reduce unemployment have been an integral component of government programs in most developed capitalist countries since the end of World War II. Yet this "employment policy" sounds like an oxymoron of sorts in the United States....

Worker's willingness to accept contingent employment.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The purpose of this paper is to explore the notion of workers' willingness to accept contingent employment. Contingent jobs are defined broadly as jobs that will not last indefinitely. Given the opposing views of these employment arrangements -...

Introduction: Robert Eisner's common sense commitment to full employment and activist fiscal policy.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)(technical economist)
June 1, 1999... When Robert Eisner was invited to participate in the AFEE Roundtable on Employment Policy, he not only accepted the invitation on the spot, but also immediately said that he would speak about "Employment Policy and the NAIRU." For years, he...

Functional finance and full employment: lessons from Lerner for today.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)(Abba Lerner)
June 1, 1999... In this paper, I review seven important lessons to be learned from the work done by Abba Lerner some five decades ago. Lesson 1: Full employment, price stability, and a decent standard of living for all are fundamental macroeconomic goals,...

Public service employment-assured jobs program: further considerations.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is "rash" to employ men, and that it is financially "sound" to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an indefinite period, is...

Who loses from unemployment.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... It is both useful and tantalizingly disruptive to reconsider unemployment from the standpoint of Karl Marx's mid-1860s construction categories of surplus population under capitalist accumulation. Marx [1967, 6411 refers first to the floating...

Liberal strategies for combating joblessness in the twentieth century.(Papers from the 1999 AFEE Meeting)
June 1, 1999... Most discussions of policy options for combating joblessness focus on the conflict between conservative and liberal proposals.(1) This is both understandable and appropriate, since it is out of the conflict between Right and Left that the...