Journal of Economic Issues articles from June 2000

Journal of Economic Issues archives from June 2000

A Manifesto for Institutional Economics.
June 1, 2000... Remarks Upon Receiving the Veblen-Commons Award My dictionary defines a manifesto as a public declaration of principles or intentions. This manifesto begins by briefly recalling the work of the leading institutional economists of the 1920s...

Digital Technology and Institutional Change from the Gilded Age to Modern Times: The Impact of the Telegraph and the Internet.
June 1, 2000... As Ron Stanfield noted in his AFEE presidential address last year, the original institutional economics is currently faced with a historic window of opportunity as the success of the new institutional economics indicates widespread recognition...

Institutionalism Between the Wars.
June 1, 2000... Recently, I completed a paper on institutional economics in the 1920s [Rutherford, forthcoming]. That paper is more than 60 pages in length and could easily have been longer. Indeed, most of the comments I received suggested expanding one or...

Institutional Economics after One Century.
June 1, 2000... Institutional economics, by any reckoning, has had its centenary. Alas, institutional economics is not what it once was. It has gone from being a more or less recognized part of the discipline and practice of economics to a marginalized...

What Is the Essence of Institutional Economics?
June 1, 2000... The term "institutional economics" was announced by Walton Hamilton at a meeting of the American Economic Association in 1918 [Hamilton 1919]. Institutionalism dominated American economics, at least until the 1940s. Listing a number of...

Comments on Papers Presented at the "Institutional Economics at the Millennium: Its Past and Future" Session, January 2000.
June 1, 2000... Let me begin with Geoff Hodgson's paper, for it is an easy task for me to say that I agree with Geoff that his Item (5) is the crucial and defining characteristic of institutional economics. As I have said this in print on a number of occasions...

Discussant Remarks.
June 1, 2000... It has been the rage in this "triple aught" year to reflect upon the events of both the past 100 and the past 1,000 years, to identify and assess the significant achievements and failures occurring during the period of interest, and to...

An Ethnographer's Credo: Methodological Reflections Following an Anthropological Journey among the Econ.
June 1, 2000... The author of this article is a sociologist of science, who has chosen economics as his primary subject for investigation; that is, I am studying economists, rather than studying the economy. I assume that this fact alone differentiates me from...

Financial Aspects of the Social Security "Problem".
June 1, 2000... There is a widespread belief that the Social Security Trust Fund is going bankrupt. Thus, while Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASDI) is currently accumulating large financial surpluses, the fear is that Social...

The State as Financial Intermediary.
June 1, 2000... Start with two stylized facts about the modern state in advanced industrialized countries. One, the state's credit tends to be the best credit, better than that of business, households, or any (other) financial intermediary; better in the sense...

Political Confidence and Monetary Stability in the Age of Globalization.
June 1, 2000... The most striking aspect of recent financial crises was the rapid reversal of capital flows in countries whose currencies fell victim to speculative attack. The largest relative turnaround occurred in Thailand, which experienced a net private...

Identifying Risks, Preventing Crisis: Lessons from the Asian Crisis.
June 1, 2000... The recent financial crises in Asia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico, and the success of regimes of financial control in China, India, Chile, Colombia, and earlier in most OECD countries, have motivated me to think about ways that emerging economies...

Asia's Financial Crisis, Speculative Bubbles, and Under-Consumption Theory.
June 1, 2000... One hundred and ten years ago, A. F. Mummery and J. A. Hobson wrote, "the East-end problem, with its concomitants of vice and misery, is traced to its economic cause, and that this economic cause is the most respectable and highly extolled...

Underdevelopment in Jamaica: An Institutionalist Perspective.
June 1, 2000... Despite constant postwar efforts to decipher the development process, it appears that little practical progress has been made. Many theories have been proposed (some leading directly to policy), but very few countries have succeeded in breaking...

Inequality in Income Distributions: Does Culture Matter? An Analysis of Western Native American Tribes.
June 1, 2000... Social theorists have postulated a relationship between the cultural characteristics of a society and resource distributions in its community [Flanagan and Rayner 1988, 2,13; Leacock 1978, 227]. For example, more hierarchical societies might be...

The Development of the Manufacturing Sector in South Africa.
June 1, 2000... The key to economic growth, it is said, for developing nations is to reach the point where development is self-sustaining, because investments in economic ventures yield positive returns, and these returns provide funding for new investment....

Interpreting the Consequences of Midwestern Agricultural Industrialization.
June 1, 2000... The nature and consequences of the industrialization of agriculture are well documented in academic research and in the popular press. Interpretations of the process vary in reflection of the diverse perceptions of the nature and overall...

Business Companies, Institutional Change, and Ecological Sustainability.
June 1, 2000... Peter S[ddot{o}]derbaum An increasing number of scholars understand that there are many theories of science rather than just one. Logical positivism, with its emphasis on objectivity and value neutrality, is still there. In recent years,...

National Statistics--Portrait of the Value Floor.
June 1, 2000... One of the most frequently trumpeted virtues of conventional price theory is that the analysis is capable of quantification that leads to precise results. In testing for allocative efficiency, it is possible to calculate whether or not marginal...

Ethical Limitations of Social Cost Pricing: An Application to Power Generation Externalities.
June 1, 2000... Patrik S[ddot{o}]derholm According to neoclassical economic theory, the valuation of different externalities is necessary for assisting market processes and for socially efficient choices. For example, environmental effects that are...

Devolved Politics in a Globalizing Economy: The Economic Significance of the Scottish Parliament.
June 1, 2000... The end of the century has seen the re-establishment of a Parliament and Executive to oversee a (slightly extended) set of devolved government functions in Scotland. Expectations have been raised, but can the changes make a difference to the...

European Integration and Changing Corporate Governance Structures: The Case of France.
June 1, 2000... European integration is making an important step forward with the coming of the Euro. Individual member states have harmonized a substantial part of their conjunctural, as well as structural, policies. The idea that integration implies not only...

NAFTA and Economic Activity Along the U.S.-Mexico Border.
June 1, 2000... Trade agreements between nations, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), are important institutions with far-reaching domestic and international consequences. [1] The NAFTA negotiations during 1992 and 1993 generated an...

Vickrey, Eisner, the Budget, and the Goal of Chock-Full Employment.
June 1, 2000... The Heterodox Message of Two Leading Economists William Vickrey and Robert Eisner were leading economists, with impeccable credentials within the economics profession, who rejected natural rate explanations of unemployment and shared a...

Access, Choices, and Household Income: A Comparison of Health Insurance Coverage for Standard and Nonstandard Workers.(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2000... Since 1989, the number of people in the United States who do not have health insurance has increased by 10.1 million to 44.3 million people, or 16.3 percent of the US population [Carrasquillo et al. 1999; Campbell 1999]. This is noteworthy...

What Is Wrong with Education Vouchers?
June 1, 2000... The underlying business-like presumption . . . appears to be that learning is a merchantable commodity, to be produced on a piece-rate plan, rated, bought and sold by standard units, measured, counted and reduced to staple equivalence by...

Welfare Reform and Inequality: The TANF and UI Programs.(Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Unemployment Insurance)(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2000... The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 significantly changed the nature of income support for poor families in the United States with the elimination of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)-- the...

The Living Wage Movement: Building a Political Link from Market Wages to Social Institutions.
June 1, 2000... The living wage is an idea that is at the heart of a new political strategy to raise real wages in the United States. It is focused on those workers who have been left behind in the economic boom of the 1990s. The sales, clerical, operative,...