Travail domestique et espace-temps des femmes

The subject of this article is the division of labour between the sexes which is specific to capitalism, and the characteristics of the space-time of women. On the basis of works written by historians, we are trying to show that the present division of labour which sentences women primarily to domestic work and men to productive work, is linked to the specifically capitalist separation between production and reproduction. The whole sphere of reproduction where specialized institutions such as school or medicine are closely linked to the family, contributes, through the transformations of domestic work, to the establishment of new social relationships: the children are permanent objects of care and education, the women are defined in terms of mother-wives. Those transformations can be seen in those of the space and time of urban structures and housing. Now the space-time of women seems mainly structured by domestic work. Concrete elements underline it: for example the space-time imposed upon women is delimited by a series of prohibitions bearing upon those places and times that do not belong to domestic work. The constitution of this space-time is based upon the negation of women's work within production. Reformulated in terms of mobility, the space-time of women differs according to social classes but its main features stem from the division of labour between the sexes and the status of the mother-wife.     

Henry George and Europe

Abstract . Henry George's land reform ideas became known in Germany not through his writing or speaking but through the efforts of Michael Flürscheim, an industrialist and pioneer social reformer, who first presented those ideas to the public. The American's idea that the land value tax was the only legitimate source of government revenue as the only economic surplus had found no acceptance among German socialist leaders. It was a capitalist, Flürscheim, who was inspired by George's theories and wrote and spoke about them. Flürscheim brought about the foundation of the first German land reform organization. Though it failed, a successor became the largest such association in the world.     

Bonus sharing in Soviet economic reforms

Revenue sharing, i.e. workers' remuneration according to enterprise performance, has been advocated as a means against labour shortage (in socialist economies) and also as a solution to unemployment problems (in capitalist economies), with reference to the effects of revenue sharing upon workers' incentives and macro-economic conditions respectively. Compared to existing models of Soviet bonus schemes of 1965, 1986 and 1987 inclusion of these two features changes the conclusions concerning optimum factor inputs. The 1987 enterprise law may stimulate more effort as well as less employment     

Discursive Rationality and the Division of Labour

A bstract One of the great achievements of economic science is the explanation of the benefits of the division of labour in market economies. However, despite its merits this utilitarian explanation is insufficient as an account for the widespread division of labour. This insufficiency stems from the normative shortcomings of the harmony-of-interests doctrine, which cannot justify the respect of private-property titles and. therefore, cannot explain on purely utilitarian grounds the fact that the division of labour is as widespread as it in fact is. Mariam Thalos has recently provided a partial solution to this problem by arguing that religious relief in God performs a public function that facilitates human co-operation. In critical elaboration of her thesis, the division of labour is explained by taking into account a different aspect of human reason, namely, discursive rationality.     

The Thirteenth‐Century Economics of Thomas Aquinas

In the Middle Ages, discourse on economics, such as it was, proceeded for the most part as an application of theological doctrine. But economic analysis as an independent discipline per se was taking shape in thirteenth‐century scholasticism. This is shown by a review of relevant sections of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae regarding property rights and the division of labour; wealth and income policies; consumer protection and fair trade; and the distinction between usurious and licit financial returns.     

基于VAR模型的农村剩余劳动力就地转移的影响因素分析

目前我国农村存在大量剩余劳动力,如何妥善地解决农村剩余劳动力的就业问题是建设新农村、加快城镇化建设的关键环节。大量农村剩余劳动力外流,使我国农村建设发展缓慢,并出现了越来越多的以老人和幼儿为家庭的农村"空巢"现象,这对农村养老、子女教育产生了诸多负面影响。因此,更好的促进农村剩余劳动力就地转移是加快农村建设、解决城乡协调发展、提高农民收入的关键因素之一。本文利用VAR向量自回归模型分析了农村剩余劳动力就地转移的主要影响因素及影响力度,并提出了具有针对性的政策建议。     

Two Views on Social Stability: An Unsettled Question

A bstract Emil Durkheim published The Division of Labour in Society as part of his strategy to create a place for sociology as a science independent from economics. The book describes how social cohesion and cooperation evolve spontaneously in the course of the process of the division of labour. Friedrich Hayek developed a theory of markets and competition which was later extended into a theory of society, in which spontaneous evolution is a central element. The main force behind this process is competition and the evolution of coordination. Both authors address the problem of social stability. Hayek rejects Durkheim's analysis as constructivistic, but his criticism is unjustified. Further analysis reveals many similarities between the two authors theories of societal evolution. A striking point of convergence is that Hayek's theory of markets is a network theory, and that sociological network theory is directly inspired by Durkheim's work. The main differences are Hayek's emphasis on the division of knowledge and on coordination as the fundamental stabilising forces as opposed to Durkheim's stress on the division of labour and cooperation. The network approach, together with an elaboration of Hayek's psychology, offer perspectives for integrating coordination and cooperation into a unified theory of social stability.     

解读斯密分工理论,构建社会和谐分工

劳动分工不是一个新的论题,我们的前人早已看到了分工的重要性,分工是社会发展的需要。政治经济学之父亚当·斯密在《国富论》中阐述了分工理论,现在读来其思想的闪光点依然为我们所见。本文引入斯密分工理论,结合现实,提出新时代的分工思想,对建立社会劳动和谐分工作一探讨。     

Non‐Economic Factors in Economic Geography and in ‘New Regionalism’: A Sympathetic Critique

In the current debate on local and regional development and after several ‘turns’, dominant critical models have found some security in institutional, cultural and evolutionary approaches. Interest today centres on success and competitiveness and how they are reproduced in a few paradigmatic regions. A distinctive feature of these regions and places is the embeddedness of certain non‐economic factors such as social capital, trust and reciprocity based on familiarity, face‐to‐face exchange, cooperation, embedded routines, habits and norms, local conventions of communication and interaction, all of which contribute to a region’s particular success. Although these approaches may not deny the forces of the capitalist space economy, they do not explicitly acknowledge them or take them on board and so they tend to discuss non‐economic factors and institutions as autonomous forces shaping development. This essay provides a critique of these concepts based on their (1) inadequate theorization, (2) depoliticized view of politics and de‐economized use of economics and (3) reduction of space to territory. The essay concludes that we need a far more penetrating renewal of radical critique of the current space economy of capitalism. Old concepts such as uneven development, the social and spatial division of labour, the geographical transfer of value, accumulation and imperialism must be combined with cultural and institutional issues, with those non‐economic factors mentioned above.     

Aligning labour disputes with institutional,cultural and rational approach: evidence from East Asian-invested enterprises in China

This study examines the underlying critical factors, such as the institutional arrangements, working conditions, workforce composition, expatriate managers, and managerial style which influence the labour disputes in the East Asian-invested enterprises (EAIEs) in China. Throughout the process, we can determine which factors should be changed for better human resource management (HRM) practices. This research incorporates the survey data collected from the managers and factory workers working at 30 different firms invested from Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Japan in the coastal cities from 2000 to 2001.

The results or findings demonstrate that the long work hours and less regulative managerial styles have significant and positive effects on the number of the labour disputes in the Hong Kong owned firms. Among the firms owned by Taiwan, the long work hours and their authoritarian managerial style have significant effects on the frequency of the labour disputes, while the lack of unionization has a diminishing effect on the labour disputes. The firms owned by Korea, on the other hand, often encounter frequent collective actions, organized by homogeneous local workforces and supported by the relatively high numbers of trade unions. Responding to the relatively strict enforcement of the labour laws and the institutional arrangements of the local governments in northern China, the firms owned by Korea tend to adopt the less regulative and less authoritarian managerial styles. Lastly, the firms owned by Japan experience the lowest number of the labour disputes when compared to their counterparts. The observance of the legal work hours and the regulative managerial style displays a significantly diminishing effect on the number of the labour disputes, although the higher level of institutionalization of the labour relations such as higher setting-up of trade unions somewhat positively contributes to the frequency of the labour disputes.

From the theoretical perspective, our exploratory model seems to exhibit the stronger explanatory ability when the institutional, cultural, and rational factors are taken into consideration. From the institutional perspective, it is imperative for local governments to reinforce the institutional arrangements through effective supervision and enforcement of the labour regulations and legislation. From the cultural perspective, foreign investors should enhance their inter-cultural understanding and localization to diminish the industrial conflicts in the workplaces in China. From the rational perspective, foreign-investors will face more labour disputes than they had before, if harsh working conditions, such as extension of the working hours, are enforced. It is also imperative for the workers to understand their rights and empower themselves to improve their working conditions.     

The Demand for ‘Guard Labour’: Another Explanation

We consider the argument that inequality drives society to expend more resources on supervision, which imposes an extra cost on doing business – an argument advanced notably by Samuel Bowles, who framed it as a coordination failure. We propose an alternative, though not mutually exclusive, explanation in the form of government failure. We argue that the efforts of government to prohibit drugs leads to increases in violence and policing failure, which in turn force private actors to deploy resources to supervise workers and protect themselves. Our explanation complements and moderates the argument regarding the link between inequality and ‘guard labour’.     

HRM practice in emerging economies: a long way to go in the Slovak hotel industry?

Using empirical data from interviews among leading hotels in Slovakia, this paper sets out to explore recent developments in human resource management (HRM) policies and practices and labour relations in an emerging Central European economy. The main areas explored are the HRM function, employee resourcing, employee development, employee relations and emerging HRM issues. The paper establishes that there has been a move away from the traditional rigid socialist type of personnel management, but it has not been fully replaced by HRM practices. The emergent 'model' is a hybrid of the traditional Western personnel management and basic HRM activities, alongside which some legacies of the socialist personnel function still exist.     

Employment Growth in Italian Local Labour Systems: Issues of Model Specification and Sectoral Aggregation

Abstract

In this paper we construct a model to estimate local employment growth in Italian local labour markets for the period 1991–2001. The model is constructed in a similar manner to the original models of Glaeser et al. (1992), Henderson et al. (1995) and Combes (2000). Our objective is to identify the extent to which the results estimated by these types of models are themselves sensitive to the model specification. In order to do this we extend the basic models by successively incorporating new explanatory variables into the model framework. In addition, and for the first time, we also estimate these same models at two different levels of sectoral aggregation, for the same spatial structure. Our results indicate that these models are highly sensitive to sectoral aggregation and classification and our results therefore strongly support the use of highly disaggregated data.     

Cluster evolution and urban industrial dynamics in the transition from a planned to a socialist market economy: the case of Beijing

Cluster evolution and urban industrial dynamics in the transition from a planned to a socialist market economy: the case of Beijing. Spatial Economic Analysis. The transformation of the industrial structure of Beijing in the transition from a planned to a socialist market economy integrated into global markets is examined through the lens of cluster evolutions and life cycles in 1987–2007. Cluster emergence, decomposition, stabilization, upgrading, restructuring and disappearance are identified using exploratory factor analysis of input–output tables. These evolutions are interpreted in the light of the way in which backward and forward linkages provide channels of communication, new intermediate goods, new divisions of labour and new patterns of co-location, and are related to the changing industrial geography of Beijing.     

Market alternative to state activism in restoring the capitalist economy

The theory of economic transition is concerned less with the end product of building a capitalist economy than with intermediate solutions and the appropriate pace of institutional change. This article advances theoretical arguments on the advantages of a self-grown, evolutionary restoration of the capitalist economy in Eastern Europe or any country abandoning the socialist experiment.The article develops the point that of the two basic methods of setting up an economic order—the state or a market-type mechanism—only the latter can assure the emergence of a genuine, complete market. Further, it suggests that markets with self-interested individual actors at the center are not only superior to states in the allocation of scarce resources, be they economic or political, but are also the best vehicle for institution building.     

Equipements collectifs et consommation sociale

Collective consumption has become a major issue in recent developments in urban research, as a focal point in the analysis of the aspect of urbanization concerned with social conditions of reproduction of the labour force. A survey of traditional approaches shows that they adopt a conception of the state as promoter of increasing welfare. The limitations of econometric measures of ‘social welfare’ and the associated theories of consumer choice are also discussed. Recent radical studies consider collective means of consumption as means of domination and repression by the state, either by way of an Althusserian analysis of ideological state apparatus, or by an extension of the critique of psychiatric institutions elaborated by M. Foucault. The concrete analysis of collective consumption must go beyond this useful but unilateral perspective, also beyond the recurrent empiricist temptation to use concepts as ‘boxes’ for direct classification of empirical objects, and try to link together theoretically the various and contradictory aspects of socialized consumption processes. Various concepts must be developed regarding the nature of social relations of consumption: relations of production and circulation, ownership and real appropriation of the means of consumption, forms of socialization transforming these relations, nature of the use value of the means of consumption and relation with the concrete process of its realization, forms of the division of labour, ideological processes inside the consumption process. The movements and results of class struggle in the reproduction sphere can be followed through the analysis of the contradictions in collective consumption—between state domination and repression and development of the labour force, between socialization of consumption, also considering precisely its social distribution, and capitalist interests.     

Incomplete information and the time series behaviour of consumption

Pischke ( 1995 ) uses both microeconomic and macroeconomic US data to test the idea that, within an otherwise standard PIH framework, ignorance by agents of aggregate labour income can account for the observed degree of excess smoothness and sensitivity in consumption. His tests involve only the second moments of aggregate consumption and labour income. In this paper our main aim is to identify and test the restrictions his model implies for aggregate consumption dynamics, using US quarterly data over the period 1959–1996, but our framework allows us also to test an earlier, related model of Goodfriend ( 1992 ). We find that both models can be formally rejected: ignorance of aggregate labour income cannot by itself account for aggregate consumption dynamics; some other relaxation of the assumptions of the standard PIH is required. We give an example of one possible such relaxation and present evidence indicating that Pischke's version of imperfect information may, within that framework, have a significant role to play. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Whistle‐Blowing and Incentives in Firms

Whistle‐blowing is an important mechanism of corporate governance. We show that whistle‐blowing has negative effects on productive efficiency by undermining the incentives within a corporate hierarchy. In our model, a top manager intends to overreport earnings; a division manager may have evidence about the intended overreporting. We show that the division manager is more likely to have such evidence when the performance of his own division is low. Top management may offer a bribe to prevent the manager from blowing the whistle. This provides the division manager with an additional payoff when his division’s output is low. Therefore, potential whistle‐blowing undermines the division manager’s incentives to exert effort, which results in a less efficient outcome.     

South Africa's Victory Against Capitalism

The South African economy is widely misrepresented, not least by the Western media, as being an oppressive capitalist regime. Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia, demonstrates how South Africa's economy has been socialist for many decades. What South Africa requires is less socialism, not more.     

Institutions and Wage Determination: a Multi‐country Approach*

We present an empirical analysis of the determinants of labour cost in OECD countries, with particular reference to the impact of labour market institutions from 1960 to 1994. We show that labour market regulations can explain a large part of the labour cost rise in OECD countries in the last few decades once we control for productivity. These results are consistent with the findings of a companion paper [ Nickell, Nunziata and Ochel (2005) Economic Journal, Vol. 115, pp. 1–27] where the effects of institutions on unemployment are examined. We present also a discussion of the econometric issues related to the estimation of a macro pooled model like ours. We focus, among other things, on the hypothesis of poolability and on the cointegration properties of the model. The explanatory power of the model is finally tested by means of a series of country by country dynamic simulations.