Journal of Economic Issues articles from September 1996

Journal of Economic Issues archives from September 1996

The social gospel, Ely, and Common's initial stage of thought. (economist John R. Commons; social gospel advocate Richard T. Ely)
September 1, 1996... As John R. Commons rose out of the 1890s to success in the twentieth century as an institutional economist, his thought evolved through several stages. Much is known about the last stages that include his ideas in his Legal Foundations of...

The influence of Thorstein Veblen on the economics of Harold Innis.
September 1, 1996... Scholars interested in the significance of the ideas of Thorstein Veblen have managed to generate a substantial amount of research, which, when considered as a whole, supports the claim that Veblen's intellectual influence on subsequent...

Theories of consumption and waste: institutional foreshadowings in classic writings.
September 1, 1996... In his survey of consumption in the United States, Pursuing Happiness, Stanley Lebergott chastises "well-known economists such as Thorstein Veblen, Joan Robinson, J. K. Galbraith, Tibor Scitovsky and Ezra Mishan" for basing their criticisms of...

Institutional inquiry: the search for similarities and differences.
September 1, 1996... A recent article by Hans Lind has served a useful purpose albeit perhaps a different one than he intended. Lind asserts that institutionalist method is best characterized by defining it negatively as "not using certain methods" common in...

Economic regulation and new technology in the telecommunications industry.
September 1, 1996... Among the most difficult public issues facing industrialized nations today are questions of how rapidly new telecommunications technology should be adopted and the implications of this for economic regulation. The new technologies hold the...

The introduction of automatic switching into the Bell system: market versus institutional influences.
September 1, 1996... In neoclassical economics, the postulated behavior of firm profit maximization is a comprehensive idea that subsumes important institutional details concerning management and organization. In accounting for the behavioral diversity of firms in...

The nearly good, the bad, and the ugly in cost-effectiveness analysis of health care.
September 1, 1996... As the national debate about health care access, cost, and quality continues, the citizen-participant in democratic self-governance will continue to be bombarded by contradictory scientific discoveries about medical practices. This exacerbates...

Bargaining over new technology: possible effects of removing legal constraints.
September 1, 1996... In viewing the potential impact of recent technological change upon the economy and the labor market, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) recently concluded that "the United States - indeed every...

Cooperative corporate-level strategies and divergent labor relations outcomes: an institutional analysis.
September 1, 1996... Since the late 1970s, firms in most American industries have experienced increasing pressure from domestic and foreign competition. This pressure has generated changes in product markets, which, in combination with changes in technology, have...

Federal Reserve policy during the Great Depression: the impact of interwar attitudes regarding consumption and consumer credit.
September 1, 1996... Scholarly debate over the role played by the Federal Reserve System in the Great Depression has been extensive. Concern has focused, to a large extent, on the causal role played by monetary variables in the economic contraction.(1) Within a...

The changing face of Swedish corporatism: the disintegration of consensus.
September 1, 1996... Corporatist institutions, such as those that were part of the Swedish model, can reduce uncertainty, enhance coordination in the labor market, and reduce conflict, hence producing potential long-term gains through investment and employment...

The presence of hospital systems in rural areas.
September 1, 1996... While health care reform has been abandoned by the government, mergers and acquisitions, alliances, and joint ventures have continued unabated and largely unnoticed outside of the industry.(1) Expressing relief at the abandonment of reform by the...

Economics and sociology: a review essay.
September 1, 1996... For many decades, the disciplines of economics and sociology have been at odds with each other. Economists have looked down on sociology for lacking mathematical rigor; on the other hand, sociologists have criticized economics for being too...

The Handbook of Economic Sociology.
September 1, 1996... For many decades, the disciplines of economics and sociology have been at odds with each other. Economists have looked down on sociology for lacking mathematical rigor; on the other hand, sociologists have criticized economics for being too...

Social Limits to Economic Theory.
September 1, 1996... Although Jon Mulberg does not identify it as such, this book is an exercise in deconstruction - an inevitably partisan deconstruction but deconstruction nonetheless. It is so because he critiques, gets to the bottom of, and finds contradictions...

Coordination and Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise.
September 1, 1996... According to editors Lamoreaux and Raff, economists have been moving away from their "black-box" conception of the firm to more fully elaborated organizational and contractual theories at the same time that business historians have made a...

Marxism. China and Development: Reflections on Theory and Reality.
September 1, 1996... This is an interesting and provocative book on the application of Marxist theory, as presented by Marx and Engels, to the Soviet Union, China, and developing countries. Gregor argues that Marx and Engels considered capitalism as the appropriate...

The Literate Economist: A Brief History of Economics.
September 1, 1996... It is not often that a history of thought text is published that is substantially different from its predecessors. Most serve up a standard menu of predictable topics with only a slight variation in order or emphasis. While E. Ray Canterbery's...

Unemployment, Imperfect Competition and Macroeconomics.
September 1, 1996... The field of Post Keynesian economics encompasses a set of conceptions of the macroeconomy that exhibit some degree of variation in focus and emphasis. And yet, while they display certain differences in presuppositions and points of emphasis, the...

Out of the Margin: Feminist Perspective on Economics.
September 1, 1996... This is a collection of 15 essays and 5 commentaries that were first presented at a conference titled "Out of the Margin. Feminist Perspectives on Economics Theory" held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in June 1993. The goal of the conference was...

The Fiscal Crisis of the States: Lessons for the Future.
September 1, 1996... The fiscal capabilities of state and local governments in relation to the fiscal responsibilities that have been assumed by (or imposed upon) those levels of government have been put in the spotlight once again by new proposals in Congress to...

Property Taxes and Tax Revolts: The Legacy of Proposition.
September 1, 1996... The fiscal capabilities of state and local governments in relation to the fiscal responsibilities that have been assumed by (or imposed upon) those levels of government have been put in the spotlight once again by new proposals in Congress to...

The State, Technology and Industrialization in Africa.
September 1, 1996... The chapters in Part 1 are each devoted to a major issue in the choice of technology and are illustrated with a case study of a particular industry in a country, a comparison of the same industries in more than one country or with a variety of...

Agricultural Instability in China, 1931-1991: Weather, Technology, and Institutions.
September 1, 1996... One is tempted to describe this book in terms of hyperbole and cliches. Simply stated, Agricultural Instability in China, 1931-1991 is a monumental work of scholarship and a definitive study that will be essential reading for future research and...

Democracy, Dialogue, and Environmental Disputes: The Contested Languages of Social Regulation.
September 1, 1996... The problem of hazardous waste disposal in the United States remains a serious and controversial problem in the 1990s despite two decades of attempted regulation. Bruce Williams and Albert Matheny present an excellent description of those...

Capitalism, Socialism, and Post Keynesianism; Selected Essays of G.C. Harcourt.
September 1, 1996... Geoff Harcourt has been an amazingly prolific economist. The Australian nation has officially recognized Harcourt's "service to economic theory and the history of economic thought" by making him an Officer of the General Division of the Order of...

From Political Economy to Anthropology: Situating Economic Life in Past Societies.
September 1, 1996... This volume contains nine essays in the tradition of Karl Polanyi. The title refers to Polanyi's shift of interest from political economy to anthropology, which I gather means nothing more than a shift of analytic focus from current to past...

The Political Economy of Diversity: Evolutionary Perspectives on Economic Order and Disorder.
September 1, 1996... This is a carefully selected and edited collection of presentations made to the fourth conference of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE), which was held in Paris in November 1992. The book has 13 chapters, grouped...

John Bates Clark: The Making of a Neoclassical Economist.
September 1, 1996... John Bates Clark (1847-1938) was one of the founders of the neoclassical school of economics, with its emphasis on marginalism. As the subtitle of this book by John F. Henry indicates, Clark did not develop his neoclassical approach immediately...

Artful Practices: The Political Economy of Everyday Life.
September 1, 1996... I will admit straight away that I am disappointed that Artful Practices is not at all what I expected it to be when I agreed to review it for JEI. The title of the book and the fact that I, an anthropologist, was being asked to review it...