Journal of Economic Issues articles from June 2002

Journal of Economic Issues archives from June 2002

The 2002 Veblen-Commons Award recipient: Edythe S. Miller.
June 1, 2002... It is always a great pleasure to recognize the recipient of the Veblen-Commons Award since this is the highest honor that our association can bestow. This year's award is particularly significant because its recipient, Edythe S. Miller, is an...

Economics in a public interest: remarks upon receiving the Veblen-Commons Award.
June 1, 2002... I am honored to receive the Association for Evolutionary Economics Veblen-Commons Award. It goes without saying that Thorstein Veblen and John R. Commons are among the economists whom I most revere, as do we all. To receive the award that bears...

An ethical basis for institutional economics.
June 1, 2002... We are discussing no small matter, but how we ought to live. Socrates, The Republic The purpose of my paper is to consider the role of ethics in institutional economics. (1) Ethics is a necessary foundation for institutional economics....

Should economics be an evolutionary science? Veblen's concern and philosophical legacy. (Clarence Ayres Memorial Lecture).
June 1, 2002... "Why is economics not an evolutionary science?" It is now over a hundred years since Thorstein Veblen formulated this question, possibly the most famous of all questions in the history of economics. In an essay acknowledging Veblen as "the...

John R. Commons and the problem of international labor rights.
June 1, 2002... Those familiar with the work of Karl Polanyi will not find it surprising that increased international economic integration since the 1970s has brought forth protest about its destabilizing effects. Among the most pressing issues debated by...

How did we get here from there? Movement into temporary employment.(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... As a stylized fact, the "old economy" tended to reward stable, predictable employment relationships and loyalty because large-scale production depended on stability. Institutional structures such as union contracts, legislation against unjust...

Gender and informal sector employment in Indonesia.(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... The decision whether to participate in the labor market is frequently modeled as a decision between two choices: to work or not to work. While this may be the appropriate way to model that decision for men, there is some question as to how well...

The impact of unionization on health insurance benefits.(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... Within labor economics, it is a stylized fact that unions exert a positive influence on both wages and fringe benefits. Although most of the literature focuses on the union--non-union wage differential (Parsley 1980; Freeman and Medoff 1984;...

The politics of minimum wage legislation in the Western United States: lessons in policy and power.
June 1, 2002... During the 1980s, a number of states raised their minimum wages, at least in part in response to Congressional unwillingness to raise the federal minimum wage. Among these were four western states: California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii....

The difference a job makes: the effects of employment among people with disabilities.(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... How does employment affect the lives of people with disabilities? While employment can have a variety of benefits for all individuals, it may play an especially positive role for members of minority groups who have been socially marginalized...

Retirement insecurity in the age of money-manager capitalism.
June 1, 2002... In his interpretation of Joseph A. Schumpeter's theory of economic development, Hyman P. Minsky (1990) argued that financial innovation plays an important role in the process of creative destruction. To illustrate this point, Minsky described...

What is wrong with wage subsidies?
June 1, 2002... The virtually unchallenged embrace of neo-liberalism as the dominant political philosophy of our era has been accompanied by a revival of economic policies (deregulation of public utilities, deregulation of financial markets, welfare "reform,"...

The theory of the Bondholding Class.
June 1, 2002... It is oft repeated that the world changed on September 11, 2001. Some things nonetheless remain the same. Alan Greenspan remains head of the Federal Reserve. Back in summer 1998 he had a revelation: "The current economic performance... is as...

Keynes' Chapter 22: a system dynamics model.(economist John Maynard Keynes)
June 1, 2002... Financial crises are becoming more frequent events in the world economy. The broad-based move to increased capital market liberalization over the past few decades has not only contributed to the fragility exhibited but also managed to make...

What happened to Goldilocks? A Minskian framework.(economist Hyman Minsky)
June 1, 2002... Three decades ago, both President Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman announced that "we're all Keynesians now." Since that time, Keynesian economic policy has remained out of favor both in the ivory towers of academia and in our nation's...

Minsky's theory of financial crises in a global context.(economist Hyman Minsky)
June 1, 2002... Hyman Minsky's theory of financial crises was developed in the context of a domestic economy. Recent financial instability in the international economy, however, suggests that it would be useful to examine his theory in a more global...

Money manager capitalism: still here, but not quite as expected.
June 1, 2002... Hyman Minsky is well known for books and essays on the cyclical instability of capitalism. In the last dozen or so years of his life, however, Minsky often looked beyond business cycles and focused instead on the structural evolution of...

Venture capitalist financing: contemporary foundations for Minsky's "Wall Street" perspective.(economist Hyman Minsky)
June 1, 2002... The Anatomy of Financial Instability Hyman Minsky's (1975, 1982) analysis of the predisposition of capitalistic economies like the United States to periods of hyperactivity and fragility in their financial markets is relatively...

Wealth and poverty: on the social creation of scarcity.
June 1, 2002... Economics has often been called the science of wealth, with the alleviation of poverty as one of the justifications for both the pursuit of wealth and the study of that pursuit (economic theory). In the language of politicians, if we want to...

United States-Mexico income convergence?(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... US GDP per capita in 2000 was $34,950 (US Department of Commerce 2001). The corresponding figure for Mexico was $5,720 (Bank of Mexico 2001). (1) The US-Mexico income gap is not a new phenomenon brought about by recent policy trends. Rather,...

The TANF reauthorization debate: key welfare reform issues and concerns.(Temporary Assistance to Needy Families)
June 1, 2002... In the United States today, the term "welfare reform" generally refers to the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which replaced the federal cash public assistance program Aid to Families with...

Free ride: an institutionalist analysis of information in the Internet age.
June 1, 2002... The distribution mechanisms for intellectual property are undergoing radical change. Until recently, intellectual property distribution was constrained by the technology of mechanical reproduction: LPs had to be pressed, CDs had to be burned,...

Mediated preferences-how institutions affect consumption.
June 1, 2002... Even though Adam Smith claimed that "consumption is the sole end of production," economists have not given it much attention. Institutional economics has done better than the average strand of thought in the economics discipline, however,...

Operating in the public interest or in pursuit of private profits? News in the age of media consolidation.(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... The "synergies" created by means of the major media mergers in the United States over the past decade--the combination of massive libraries of content with multiple distribution channels-have been heralded as important benefits for consumers....

The rise of big business in turn-of-the-century America: a taxonomy of interpretations.
June 1, 2002... During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American manufacturing underwent rapid and sustained changes. Large, mass-production factories replaced smaller, craft-based operations. As average plant size grew, the total number of...

Policymaking network of the iron-triangle subgovernment for licensing hazardous waste facilities.
June 1, 2002... The purposes here are to explain the linkage of(1) economic methodology, (2) corporate networks, and (3) federal court decisions in the licensing of hazardous waste facilities and to recognize the opportunity the combination of the three...

Sioux Falls, Citibank, and CRA: do US credit card banks deserve their "outstanding" community reinvestment performance evaluations?(Community Reinvestment Act)(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... The US Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 turns twenty-five years old this year. Thus, 2002 is an appropriate time to reflect on where it came from, how it works, and the ways it might be improved. (1) In this paper, we are specifically...

The Veblenian credit economy and the corporatization of American meatpacking.(Thorstein Veblen)(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... Since the 1970s, American agriculture has experienced both horizontal and vertical integration. Elements of this reorganization are apparent in the rapid growth of large industrialized livestock facilities and in the use of tying contracts to...

African drama: Myrdal and progressive institutional change in South Africa.(Gunnar Myrdal)(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... Like many less developed countries (LDCs), South Africa has recently enacted neoliberal reforms and has thus earned high praise. For instance, The Economist (2001b) pronounced that "the government has done lots of things right. It has reduced...

John Commons on institutional disorder and an application relating to property rights in Maasai territory.(economics)
June 1, 2002... Economic order is a central theme in John R. Commons' brand of institutional economics. (1) Individuals may have conflicting interests, but they also mutually depend on each other, so that working rules are developed to structure the...

Standard setting in the African horticultural export market: a bottom-up or top-down approach?
June 1, 2002... Stricter quality standards for horticultural products1 are currently emerging in developed countries and can have tremendous impact on the ability of developing countries to gain access to those markets. The primary objectives of these...

The conditions of progress: J.R. Commons' reform method.(economist)
June 1, 2002... This paper intends to show that Commons' conception of economic progress and hence institutional reform is consistent with the now traditional ceremonial/instrumental dichotomy of institutional economics. In this it builds upon the work of Glen...

National sovereign economy, global market economy, and transnational corporate economy.
June 1, 2002... In neoclassical international economics the national sovereign economy is the standard unit of analysis, and there exists only a market-driven cross-border economy (which is hereafter called the global market economy) whose efficiency is...

Whither the NIE.(new institutional economics)
June 1, 2002... The purpose of this paper is to communicate to economists who work primarily in the original institutional economics (OIE) tradition recent developments in new institutional NIE theories regarding transitional economies that are of both...

The demarcation between the "old" and the "new" institutional economics: recent complications.
June 1, 2002... Proponents of the Veblen-Commons variety of institutionalism have distinguished this school from the so-called "new institutional economics" (NIE hereafter). Recent contributions to the Journal of Economic Issues have once again dealt with this...

To what extent is Veblen an open-systems theorist?(economist Thorstein Veblen)
June 1, 2002... The concept of open systems (OS) is increasingly influential. Several institutionalists, including William Kapp (1968), have used the concept, but Geoffrey Hodgson (2000) argued that it is currently underdeveloped. This paper aims to stimulate...