Journal of Economic Issues articles from June 2003

Journal of Economic Issues archives from June 2003

The 2003 Veblen-Commons Award recipient: F. Gregory Hayden.
June 1, 2003... Our divergent ages notwithstanding, Greg Hayden has long been an impressive model for me of the exemplary professional scholar. He is an exceptional classroom instructor, an original theory builder, a frequent and vigorous policy advocate, a...

Endangered democratic institutions and instrumental inquiry: remarks upon receiving the Veblen-Commons Award.(Transcript)
June 1, 2003... I want to thank the Association for this honor. I am exceedingly grateful for the award. In addition, I am exceedingly grateful for the Association for Evolutionary Economics. The Association, the Journal of Economic Issues, and the outstanding...

Are democracy and common property possible on our small earth?
June 1, 2003... The keynote of democracy as a way of life maybe expressed. .. as the necessity for the participation of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together. John Dewey Writing in the 1930s......

Clarence Ayres memorial lecture: does pragmatism imply institutionalism?
June 1, 2003... The Affinity between Pragmatism and institutionalism: Of Political Nature Only? It is old, established knowledge that there are close political and ideological affinities between pragmatistic philosophy and the institutional position in...

Corporations, workers, and the public interest.
June 1, 2003... The corporate scandals of the past year have raised profound questions regarding corporations and the public interest. As Thorstein Veblen observed, in a society dominated by pecuniary interests corporations are presumed to be operating in the...

Labor market policy: one institutionalist's agenda.
June 1, 2003... Institutionalists have taken the position that policy advocacy is consistent with the writings of foundational thinkers such as Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, and Karl Polanyi (Hayden 1939). What is distinctive about an institutionalist...

Immigration and poverty reduction: policy making on a squirrel wheel.
June 1, 2003... The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (EOA), which launched the War on Poverty in the United States, was more than a major accomplishment of the Great Society's political agenda. It marked the beginning of "a new approach to poverty" (Levitan...

Ghosts in the global machine: new immigrants and the redefinition of work.
June 1, 2003... Latinos are like ghosts; they come to work and then they go home. --Temporary Staffing Agency Manager The incorporation of new immigrant workers into the lower reaches of the U.S. labor market has been a very significant employment...

Female headship and the economic status of young men in the United States, 1977-2001.
June 1, 2003... Poverty rates among female-headed households in the United States are substantially, and persistently, higher than poverty rates for households headed by married persons or unmarried males (see figure 1). This fact is presented as evidence in...

Feminist explanations for the feminization of poverty.
June 1, 2003... It is well known that women are much more likely to be poor than men. This is true in the United States (Pearce 1978; Pressman 1988) and in most developed nations (Casper, McLanahan, and Garfinkel 1994; Pressman 2002). But the causes of this...

Technology and institutions in the process of economic reform: achieving growth with poverty reduction in South Asia.(impact information, communications technology on financial sector)
June 1, 2003... The prime premise in Clarence Ayres' Theory of Economic Progress (1962) is that the pace of advance in a society is driven by cumulative technological evolution. Technology is not tools alone but encompasses irreducibly the human skills and...

The Andean Group: institutional evolution, intraregional trade, and economic development.
June 1, 2003... A simple statement motivates this paper: "1996 stands as the year of institutional reform." The statement comes from Monica Rosell (2002) of the General Secretariat of the Andean Community. She referred to recent reforms of the Cartagena...

Equality and growth in Asia.
June 1, 2003... If the accumulation of physical capital (tools, machinery, and buildings) is a major driving force behind growth, then the degree of equality will affect growth through its effects on investment in physical capital. (1) There are two opposite...

Globalization and the poorest of the poor: global integration and the development process in Sub-Saharan Africa.
June 1, 2003... Most recent studies of globalization describe the experiences of developed countries, and studies focusing on developing countries usually ignore sub-Saharan Africa. Yet Africa's experiences with globalization are unique. While the World Bank...

Social capital, Karl Polanyi, and American social and institutional economics.
June 1, 2003... Over the past decade there has been a surge of literature on so-called "social capital" (3K). It is unfortunate that the term social capital has been selected to describe the rich, complex set of social networks under investigation (Robison et...

Subjects and boundaries: contesting social capital--based policies.
June 1, 2003... [B]oundaries of the mind and habit are harder to take down [than boundaries between states]. --The Economist The World Bank is prime among the organizations formulating and implementing economic policy around the world. In recent years...

Beyond social capital in poverty research.
June 1, 2003... Social capital has been a contested notion among economists since it came up in economic literature in the mid 1990s. It is not a theory as human capital theory is, nor is it a clearly distinguishable field of study, but it is a concept that...

Consumer-driven health plans: more choice is not always better.
June 1, 2003... The emerging stage in the evolution of health care finance and delivery in the $370 billion a year health insurance industry in the United States is the "consumer-driven" health plan. Consumer-driven plans include those in which enrollees can...

Universal service: how much is enough?
June 1, 2003... The Telecommunications Act of 1996 dramatically altered the regulatory environment of the telecommunications industry. The purpose of the act was to exchange regulatory pricing principles for market prices. Regulators would no longer establish...

Regulating financial markets: assessing neoclassical and institutional approaches.
June 1, 2003... Global financial markets are currently perceived to be in crisis. Debate over regulatory reform in the financial industry has, consequently, assumed national prominence. Although many American industries are heavily regulated, including public...

Superfund: the ascendance of enabling myths.
June 1, 2003... Industrial manufacturing, particularly in petroleum and chemical industries, has a history associated with hazardous waste disposal practices leading to highly contaminated sites. The evolution of the U.S. Superfund policy addressing the...

Cognitive and cultural embeddedness: combining institutional economics and economic sociology.
June 1, 2003... A minority of economists and a relatively larger contingent of scholars in other social sciences have attempted to show that the neoclassical theory of economic behavior has serious limitations and to develop alternative approaches. In this...

Capitalism, complexity, and inequality.
June 1, 2003... Under capitalism there is a potential for increasing socioeconomic complexity and greater specialization of skills. (1) One implication is that there is a potential for increasing inequalities of wealth, income, and power on both a national and...

Technical change, competition, and the poor.
June 1, 2003... Economists today conventionally assume that new technologies necessarily improve the lives of those who are willing to pay money to purchase the products or processes that embody them. The conclusion follows from their premises--given "economic...

Path creation, path dependency, and alternative theories of the firm.
June 1, 2003... During the 1980s, Paul David and Brian Arthur published several papers that are now regarded as the foundation of path dependency (David 1985; Arthur 1989, 1990). The basic assertion in these and related essays is that sub-optimal or...

Institutional destruction of entrepreneurship through capitalist transformation.
June 1, 2003... Emerging out of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was a different kind of individual who later became known as the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur has been a driving force for change and has been responsible for shaping the material...

Corporate objectives--maximizing social versus private equity.
June 1, 2003... Many scholars will declare someday that 2002 was the year of the corporate scandal since it was during this time that some of the most egregious examples of executive greed in history were revealed. Because the once-respected heads of large...

Is there an active role for monetary policy in the endogenous money approach?
June 1, 2003... The "New Consensus" View on Monetary Policy In the last two decades or so monetary policy has gained the most prominent role in the economic policy debate. More importantly, academics and policy makers have abandoned the targeting of...

Japan's dual industrial structure as a welfare system: "the Lexus and the Olive Tree"-and "the Vulture".
June 1, 2003... During the high-growth period of 1950-1973 (Golden Age of Capitalism) and its subsequent two decades, Japan came to be known for efficiency and perfectionism in manufacturing as exemplified by the low production costs and high quality of...