Journal of Economic Issues articles from March 1996

Journal of Economic Issues archives from March 1996

The new alchemy: Veblen's theory of crisis and the 1974 British property and secondary banking crisis. (Thorstein Veblen)
March 1, 1996... Historically, the British banking system has been characterized by a much lower level of financial crises and bank failures than most other developed countries. The most severe crisis experienced by the system during this century occurred in...

International financial instability and the financial derivatives market.
March 1, 1996... The financial derivatives market evolved rapidly in the 1980s in response to the deregulation of financial markets and financial innovation. Encompassing futures, options, currency swaps, and interest rate swaps, this market has grown to a value...

A generational dialogue.
March 1, 1996... Alpha Accepts Some Responsibility toward Phi Phi: Hullo there!(1) Alpha: Would you mind getting off the line? I'm late for my conference on investment and future generations. Phi: I know about your conference. That's why I cut in....

Racial discrimination in residential lending markets: why empirical researchers always see it and economic theorists never do.
March 1, 1996... A fundamental disagreement exists between empirical researchers who have evaluated home mortgage market data and mainstream microeconomists who have theorized about discrimination in credit markets. Empirical researchers see evidence of racial...

The road not taken: alternative strategies for Black economic development in the United States.
March 1, 1996... Throughout the twentieth century, there have been a number of approaches suggested for improving the economic viability of African-American communities in the United States. Given the economic discrimination and oppression by institutions in the...

Cumulative causation and industrial evolution: Kaldor's four stages of industrialization as an evolutionary model.
March 1, 1996... The notion of circular and cumulative causation is often associated with Nicholas Kaldor, who built on the work of Allyn Young.(1) Kaldor argued that industrialization is a cumulative process in which the development of industries producing...

Entrepreneurial strategies in Southern Europe: rural workers in the garment industry of Greece.
March 1, 1996... In a number of economies located on the periphery of western Europe, there has been a burgeoning of new enterprises and jobs in rural areas since the early 1970s. Industrialization in these regions of Italy, Iberia, and Greece took the form of...

The household as a focus for research.
March 1, 1996... Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more; So deemed the Man who fashioned for the sense These lofty pillars. - Wordsworth, "Inside of Kings College Chapel Cambridge" Institutional economists have...

Gender differences in the Russian labor market.
March 1, 1996... In an effort to obtain an insider's view of the politics, work, and daily life in the Soviet economy, more than 2,790 of the 37,000 emigrants who arrived in the United States between 1979 and 1982 were asked hundreds of questions about their...

The importance and implications of women's participation in the 1989-90 Pittston Coal strike.
March 1, 1996... No nation is greater than its women-women are fighters. - Mary "Mother" Jones On April 5, 1989, some 2,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) walked off the job at Pittston Coal Group mines in southwestern Virginia and West...

Limits to market empowerment for housing in developing countries: the case of land.
March 1, 1996... The problem with neoclassical economics is insufficiency: no full deck for economic players. In spades, they get aces and face cards for efficiency, but in hearts, some cards are missing for coping with inequities and externalities. This paper...

Citizen Murdoch-a case study in the paradox of economic efficiency. (Rupert Murdoch)
March 1, 1996... Success has ruined many a man. - Benjamin Franklin Rupert Murdoch, mephisto of the media, disciple of the global village, personifies the modern corporate entrepreneur. He seems to embody the condition of alertness that Kirzner [1979]...

A new-institutionalist story about the transformation of former socialist economies: a recounting and an assessment.
March 1, 1996... Almost all of the former socialist countries are now undergoing revolutionary transformations from central planning to market economy. New-institutionalist economics (NIE) is one prominent school of thought that has attempted to explain why these...

Concepts of value, efficiency, and democracy in institutional economics.
March 1, 1996... Among the factors that distinguish institutional economic theory from alternative economic philosophies is the significance ascribed to interrelated and interdependent theories of value and efficiency. Efficiency in Neoclassical and...

A note on "The Myth of Institutionalist Method."
March 1, 1996... In an article titled "The Myth of Institutionalist Method," Hans Lind argues that institutionalists "do not use mathematical models and 'advanced' statistical techniques," and yet "do not use any special methods of their own" [Lind 1993, 13]....

Reply to Whalen. (response to Charles J. Whalen)
March 1, 1996... Whalen argues that my conclusions are a product of the design rather than a true reflection of the reality of institutionalist research. This might be true. In my article [1993, 3], I said that the choice of articles could be questioned and that...

Bad losers: an investigation of the morality of the limited liability of shareholders in a joint stock company.
March 1, 1996... The corporation, defined as a joint stock company with limited liability, separates the firm's owners, its shareholders, from the firm itself. Problems with the shareholders' ability to control the corporation and of hired managers being...

Skidelsky's Keynes. (A review of Robert Skidelsky's "John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Savior, 1920-1937", vol. 2)
March 1, 1996... Robert Skidelsky's ambitious biography of John Maynard Keynes is two-thirds of the way toward completion. Skidelsky's pace, as well as his treatment, is unhurried. Volume 2, subtitled The Economist As Savior: 1920-1937, was published in the...

The State of Working America: 1994-95.
March 1, 1996... The State of Working America 1994-95 provides a comprehensive statistical portrait of the standard of living of working Americans. Presenting recent data on a variety of economic indicators, the authors tell a story of disparity and...

Jobs for All: A Plan for the Revitalization of America.
March 1, 1996... Millions of Americans know that hard work does not remove the threat of poverty. They live this reality everyday as the working poor. Millions more are permanently or temporarily unemployed with bleak prospects of obtaining a good job with decent...

Work for All or Mass Unemployment?
March 1, 1996... Millions of Americans know that hard work does not remove the threat of poverty. They live this reality everyday as the working poor. Millions more are permanently or temporarily unemployed with bleak prospects of obtaining a good job with decent...

Women in the Age of Economic Transformation: Gender Impact of Reforms in Post-Socialist and Developing Countries.0
March 1, 1996... This book examines the impact of recent economic change on women across a wide range of countries. The question is, do women "bear a disproportionate share of the costs resulting from widespread economic transformation?" [p. 1]. This...

Economics, Power and Culture. Essays in the Development of Radical Institutionalism.
March 1, 1996... The volume consists of 13 of Stanfield's papers published between 1974 and 1989, with a preface and introduction by the author. The essays are organized in three parts: the Epistemology of Economics, Contemporary Political Economic Institutions,...

The UN and the Bretton Woods Institutions: New Challenges for the Twenty-First Century.
March 1, 1996... This work consists of papers presented at 1993 meetings of the North-South Roundtable of the Society for International Development, meetings which were held at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. Participants for the most part have either worked...

The New Telecommunications: A Political Economy of Network Evolution.
March 1, 1996... The telecommunications industry is undergoing a period of turbulent change. Established firms and new entrants are jockeying for position to exploit the profit opportunities associated with the information revolution. At the same time,...

The Global Political Economy of Communication.
March 1, 1996... The telecommunications industry is undergoing a period of turbulent change. Established firms and new entrants are jockeying for position to exploit the profit opportunities associated with the information revolution. At the same time,...

Pricing, Valuation and Systems: Essays in Neoinstitutional Economics.
March 1, 1996... Marc Tool's new volume brings together papers that present his neo-institutionalist perspective on two important issues. Six of the papers have been previously published; four are new for this volume. Two chapters introduce Tool's...

On Economic Institutions: Theory and Applications.
March 1, 1996... Edward Elgar continues to bring out books of merit in heterodox economics. His list puts older and larger houses to shame. This particular volume is a product of the 1993 international conference of the European Association for Evolutionary...

Transaction Cost Economics and Beyond: Towards a New Economics of the Firm.
March 1, 1996... The transaction cost approach, as explicated by its most famous proponent, Oliver Williamson, has opened questions hitherto unexplored by orthodox economists - how firms and organizations emerge and why they change over time. The answers offered...

The Rise of Japanese Corporate System.
March 1, 1996... This revised and updated translation of a work written by a former Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) official, and originally published in 1983 for a Japanese audience, has much to offer institutionalists interested in Japan and...

Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism.
March 1, 1996... Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960 chronicles a war fought between World War II and 1960 - not the Cold War, but a similarly ideological battle for the hearts and minds of America's working class....

The Market Meet its Match: Restructuring the Economies of Eastern Europe.
March 1, 1996... The main message of the authors is a Karl Polanyi-inspired theme: Modern Western capitalism did not evolve spontaneously by the force of free markets, and therefore there is no historical precedence to prove that economic transformation in...

Implementing a Human Development Strategy.
March 1, 1996... At the invitation of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Griffin and McKinley have provided in a relatively small book (138 pages) a highly commendable and thorough synthesis and review of the first three Human Development Reports...

Opening up Hungary to the World Market.
March 1, 1996... Most studies of the transition process in the former socialist centrally planned economies have focussed on the internal dimensions of their transformation: the creation of the necessary legal and institutional framework for market economies, the...

Community and the Economy: The Theory of Public Cooperation.
March 1, 1996... I enjoyed reading this book. Jonathan Boswell addresses some of the most timely questions of our age with broad philosophical and empirical research. It is a book meant for a wide audience. The most appropriate use in colleges is probably at the...

Theories of Technical Change and Investment: Riches and Rationality.
March 1, 1996... This book explores the relations between technical change, investment, and economic growth. The author argues that the contribution of capital formation to the overall growth rate of industrial economies is relatively small compared to the...

Globalization and Interdependence in the International Political Economy.
March 1, 1996... This is not a work about specific issues and problems in the international political economy; instead, Jones has developed a framework for the analysis of issues and problems rooted in an international setting. His overriding concern is with the...