Journal of Economic Issues articles from March 1998

Journal of Economic Issues archives from March 1998

The concordance of George Herbert Mead's "social self" and John R. Commons's 'Will."(The Social Psychological Underpinnings of Commons's Institutional Economics, part 2)
March 1, 1998... The founding fathers of institutional economics were unequivocal in their rejection of the psychological underpinnings of mainstream economics and in their further view that economic theory, to be judged sound, must be supported by an acceptable...

Heuristic judgement theory.
March 1, 1998... Because we are social animals, the collective behavior of humans must be understood in terms of the cultural forces at work. World views, mores, taboos, and sanctions are among the social influences that shape and guide our behavior, so much so...

The working poor: lousy jobs or lazy workers?
March 1, 1998... Most Americans believe that if one works hard, one should not be poor. Yet the working poor are one of the fastest growing segments of the impoverished population, and their growth is expected to continue [Levitan et al. 1993; Caputo 1991]....

Support for baby-boom retirees - not to worry.
March 1, 1998... Discussion of the baby-boom retiree problem has suffered from two serious inadequacies that have made the Social Security problem appear much more ominous than it is. The first inadequacy is an overweening emphasis upon fiscal and related...

Towards a reconsideration of social evolution: symbiosis and its implications for economics.
March 1, 1998... Renewed interest among economists in Darwin's theory has generated confusion regarding the meaning of social evolution. Does social evolution refer to the selective adaptation of institutions as advanced by old institutionalism? Or does evolution...

State theory and the dependency principle: an institutionalist critique of the business climate concept.
March 1, 1998... The State-Capital Relationship In the continuing literature on state theory and political power, "the dependency principle" has gained wide acceptance among political scientists and sociologists as an important concept for explaining the...

Financial innovation as facilitator of merger activity.
March 1, 1998... In The Theory of Business Enterprise in 1904, Thorstein Veblen developed an explanation of the relationship among the rise of a national market, the phenomenon of destructive price competition, and the merger movement, which produced the modern...

The reform of utility regulation in Britain: some current issues in historical perspective.
March 1, 1998... The privatization of the British utility industries by Conservative governments from the early 1980s entailed a new regulatory system to replace public ownership. That new system has been the subject of much criticism, and the remodelled Labour...

Empirical economics? An econometric dilemma with only a methodological solution.
March 1, 1998... Conventional econometric practice begins with a general model or family of models. Various model specifications are explored, and the one that best fits the data is chosen. If, however, researchers regard the chosen model as merely a convenient...

Minimum wage increases and the business failure rate.
March 1, 1998... One of the staple arguments that business groups, especially those representing small businesses, use against minimum wage increases is that they will drive a number of firms out of business entirely. The logic is simple and straightforward....

The presence of history: a survey of articles on the history of economic thought and methodology in the 'Economic Literature Index,' 1969-1995.
March 1, 1998... The status of the history of economic thought in the profession has been the subject of study and speculation. The history of economic thought has increasingly been eliminated as a required or elective course at both the graduate and...

Everything for Sale.
March 1, 1998... This book will be read with great pleasure by all institutional and heterodox economists for it reaffirms, again and again, the cardinal tenets of the institutionalist approach to economic inquiry. It should also be required reading for all...

Political Economy for the 21st Century.
March 1, 1998... This book is a collection of 12 essays plus an introduction by the editor, a conclusion by Robert Heilbroner, and a preface by Hyman Minsky. The essays are divided into four broad topic areas: (1) provisioning, ethics, and gender; (2) firms,...

The Intellectual Legacy of Thorstein Veblen: Unresolved Issues.
March 1, 1998... With this book, Rick Tilman continues his highly productive research program on the thought and impact of Thorstein Veblen. The book focuses on a series of issues much debated in the recent literature on Veblen, including matters relating to...

The Institutional Economics of the International Economy.
March 1, 1998... If all research is biased, then certainly all book reviews are, and this may be particularly the case here. Four of the authors - William Cole, Hans Jensen, Anne Mayhew, and Walter C. Neale - where my instructors. I use the work of another...

Foundations of Research in Economics: How do Economists do Economics?
March 1, 1998... Skillful interviewers aim to ask open-ended questions that elicit meaningful insights about the subject under investigation. In their book, Steven G. Medema and Warren J. Samuels reveal this prowess when they set out to discover more about the...

Taxing America.
March 1, 1998... This is a collection of 14 papers, plus a preface and introduction by the editors. One of the editors, Karen Brown, is also an author of a paper in this collection. While the editors claim to be presenting new tax "theory" and "analysis," there...

Bankers with a Mission: The Presidents of the World Bank.
March 1, 1998... Since its inception in 1946, as the World Bank has grown, the role and character of its presidents has resulted in "a rich supply of anecdotes and myths." Jochen Kraske, historian of the World Bank Group and staff member of the Bank for 30 years,...

Distributional Conflict and Inflation: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives.
March 1, 1998... Distributional Conflict and Inflation presents an exploration of the conflict approach to explaining price inflation. "According to this approach, upward pressures on the price level result from an excess of income claims over the real income...

The Relevance of Keynesian Economic Politics Today.
March 1, 1998... It will take persistent efforts by institutionalist, Marxist, Post Keynesian, and other progressive economics to combat the current revival of conventional thinking among economists. This volume is an effective demonstration of the pertinence and...

Essays in Honour of Paul Davidson, 2 vols.
March 1, 1998... These two books constitute a tribute to a most productive scholar, Paul Davidson, the long-time editor of the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, who celebrated his 65th birthday a couple of years ago. The Festschrift was organized by Philip...

Liberal Economics and Democracy: Keynes, Galbraith, Thurow, and Reich.
March 1, 1998... This complex, well-organized book is about a theory, or vision, or ideology, including values that Waligorski calls "reform liberalism" (henceforth "RL"). He notes that in recent literature this theory has been given 11 other names such as...