Journal of Economic Issues articles from June 1 2006

Journal of Economic Issues archives from June 1 2006

The 2006 Veblen-Commons Award Recipient: James Ronald Stanfield
June 1, 2006... Ron Stanfield receives the 2006 Veblen-Commons Award for his intellectual and personal contributions to political economy. His major conceptual contributions encompass the economic surplus, socioeconomic reproduction, disembedded economy, and...

From OIE and NIE toward EE: Remarks upon Receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award
June 1, 2006... He has neither antecedent nor consequent. --Thorstein Veblen, 1898 [T]he economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place. --Friedrich Hayek, 1945 Capitalism...

Christian Morals and the Competitive System Revisited
June 1, 2006... In his essay "Christian Morals and the Competitive System," Thorstein Veblen noted that "Western Civilization was both Christian and competitive (pecuniary)" and that each was based on a contradictory code of ethics. Given the rise in interest...

The Evolution of National Innovation Systems
June 1, 2006... The literature on national innovation systems (NIS) is a relatively new and rapidly growing field of research (1) (Fagerberg 2003; Balzat and Hanusch 2004). The NIS approach was initiated in the late 1980s by Chris Freeman (1987), Giovanni Dosi...

Balancing Inertia, Innovation, and Imitation in Complex Environments
June 1, 2006... Since Thorstein Veblen, perennial themes in institutionalist writings have included the role of imitation (or emulation) and the tension between inertia (or conservatism) and innovation in individual and organizational behavior. Prior models of...

Collective Action, Institutionalism, and the Internet
June 1, 2006... With increasing emphasis on the informational aspects of the economy, there are calls for the reform of existing institutions and related policy changes to maximize economic efficiency and to foster equitable distribution of the benefits of...

Infrastructure Deregulation and Privatization in Industrialized and Emerging Economies
June 1, 2006... For the past twenty-five years a diverse group of large users of energy and telecommunications, potential entrants, and market-oriented reformers have aggressively moved to change the organization and governance of public utilities in both...

"Free Entry and Exit" from the Market: Simplifying or Substantive Assumption?
June 1, 2006... Abstraction and Economic Analysis Economic theory, of necessity, presents an abstraction to the reader. Abstraction is required to achieve the perspective that allows for theory, that is to say, understanding and interpretation, to occur. If...

Ex Post and Ex Ante Coordination: Principles of Coherence in Organizations and Markets
June 1, 2006... Oliver Williamson (1991) argued that institutional economics was "vitiated" as it has attached too much importance to spontaneous mechanisms in comparison to intentional governance. As a result, it needs a "symmetrical treatment" of both of...

IPRs, Technological Development, and Economic Development
June 1, 2006... Since it is rooted in a contradiction, there can be no such thing as an ideally beneficial patent system, and it is bound to produce negative results in particular instances. --Joan Robinson [O]wnership... gives the owner not only the...

Innovation, the Missing Link in Latin American Countries
June 1, 2006... In common with the rest of the world, Latin America is immersed in the globalization process, and this has generated opportunities as well as challenges and threats. This paper develops the theses that the form of investing, producing, and...

Analyzing and Arresting Uneven Development: Friedrich List and Gunnar Myrdal Compared
June 1, 2006... Among other contributions, Gunnar Myrdal is known for his investigations into the uneven development between developed and underdeveloped countries. His analysis is extremely rich, embodying as it does both "economic" and "noneconomic" factors....

Has Institutionalism Won the Development Debate?
June 1, 2006... In his keynote to the IMF-sponsored "Conference on Second Generation Reforms," then-president of the World Bank James Wolfensohn said, "The second generation issues focus around the questions of the structure of the right institutions, of the...

Managing Portfolio Flows
June 1, 2006... Capital account liberalization has been praised as a vehicle for faster growth and rising living standards but also criticized for raising financial instability in emerging economies. Capital account liberalization benefits the financial sector...

Which Side Are You on? How Institutional Positions Affect Financial Analysts' Incentives
June 1, 2006... Recent scandals involving financial analysts shed light on conflicts of interest in the stock market. Financial analysts were accused of releasing dishonest "buy" recommendations for stocks and biased earnings forecasts. In 2002, the New York...

Modeling Interest Rate Parity: A System Dynamics Approach
June 1, 2006... The theory of uncovered interest rate parity has enjoyed very little empirical support. Despite the fact that global financial markets trade seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, and communication takes place almost instantaneously, there...

Evolutionary Keynesianism: A Synthesis of Institutionalist and Post Keynesian Macroeconomics
June 1, 2006... The dominant paradigm in mainstream macroeconomics is a synthesis of new Keynesian and new endogenous growth economics, which has modified the new classical and monetarist-based neoliberal macroeconomics known as the "Washington Consensus." The...

Institutional Evolution of Environmental Management under Global Economic Growth
June 1, 2006... We shall consider how different institutional forms can affect the management of environmental problems at different stages of economic development, including for managing biological resources and controlling pollution emissions. Problems of...

Instinct, Culture, and Cognitive Science
June 1, 2006... Institutional economics in the United States is generally considered to have developed in and through two main eras. These eras correspond to differing assumptions concerning human nature, specifically with regard to the bases for institutional...

Toward a Grand Union: The Banyan Tree of Knowledge
June 1, 2006... The Debate and the Problem Many attempts have been made to achieve the goal of a unity of knowledge. This paper approaches the how of this desideratum from the vantage of Veblenian economics. Secondarily, the intent is also to demonstrate...

How Do Embedded Agents Engage in Institutional Change?
June 1, 2006... Institutional theories offer more insight into the processes that explain institutional stability than those that explain institutional change. This article starts by elaborating this general diagnosis and proceeds with a more specific focus on...

Competition, Knowledge, and Institutions
June 1, 2006... The development of new institutional economics (NIE) has been a huge advancement in economics. Despite attempts to integrate concepts such as bounded rationality, however, NIE has predominantly remained a neoclassical, equilibrium-oriented...

What Happened to Boulding's Evolutionary Economics?
June 1, 2006... In the view of the author and others, Kenneth E. Boulding was one of the greatest social scientists of the twentieth century. His output was prodigious: over 30 books and 150 papers. He died in 1993, and Robert Solo, Kurt Dopfer, L. Randall...

Institutions and Norms in Institutional Economics and Sociology
June 1, 2006... The concept of institutions and the related theoretical issues of their normativity and enforcement are still a matter of controversy among social scientists, including economists. The present article establishes a conceptual distinction between...

Agency and Mental Models in Heterodox Economics
June 1, 2006... Agency is power--the power to act and the power to choose, the power to imagine and the power to understand, engage, and manipulate the surrounding biological and social environment. Mainstream economics adopts the western philosophy of entirely...

Expanding the Dialogue between Institutional Economics and Contemporary Evolutionary Economics: Veblen's Methodology as a Framework
June 1, 2006... This paper addresses an enduring paradox in institutional and evolutionary economics since the 1970s: the exchanges between institutional economics (hereafter IE) and contemporary evolutionary economics (hereafter CEE) which has developed...

Kahneman, Tversky, and Institutional Economics
June 1, 2006... For institutionalists, behavior depends on the habits, routines, and customs of economic actors. Habits, routines, and customs are how actors make decisions. They are matters of law and tradition, and they get passed along by examples, by the...

The Economic Surplus, Disembedded Economy, and Nurturance Gap - the Contribution of James Ronald Stanfield to Political Economy
June 1, 2006... James Ronald Stanfield was born into a poor working class family on November 22, 1945. He was brought up in Handley, Texas, a semi-rural area at the time, went to Eastern Hills High School (in Fort Worth), and at his mother's insistence attended...

The Circular and Cumulative Structure of Administered Pricing
June 1, 2006... How are prices determined? This is a very basic economic question that many economists have sought to answer. The short explanation from neoclassical economics is that firms, seeking to maximize profits, produce until their marginal revenue...

The Inadequacy of Forrester System Dynamics Computer Programs for Institutional Principles of Hierarchy, Feedback, and Openness
June 1, 2006... The purpose here is to discuss the institutional systems principles of hierarchy, feedback, and openness, and to explain the inadequacy of Forrester-type system dynamics programs to apply those principles. Hierarchy It is the function of...

In Memory
June 1, 2006... Joel B. Dirlam 1915-2005 For six decades, Joel Dirlam brightened the academic world, standing out among the bland, cautious tribe of professional economists. He always looked something like both John Maynard Keynes and Abraham Lincoln in a...