John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution

Although he was much influenced by David Ricardo when he wrote the classical part of his Principles , John Stuart Mill was not a Ricardian when he penned his theories of wealth and distribution. They are based on a triple foundation. First, a belief that economics is a moral discipline. Second a theory of custom-driven human behavior. Third, an empirically formed conviction that the institutions of state, education and business cooperate to structure the distribution of income. On the basis of these presuppositions, Mill formulated 1) an institutional theory of the formation of human and non-human wealth and 2) an even more institutional theory of distribution demonstrating how the aforementioned institutions malignantly skew the distribution of income to the advantage of the propertied classes and to the extreme disadvantage of the working class. As a social economist, Mill recommended institutional reforms designed to eradicate the poverty of the working class.     

John Stuart Mill on wage inequalities between men and women

Abstract

Mill proposes an analysis of women’s low wages in a paragraph of Principles of Political Economy. The paper’s purpose is to confront this analysis with his conception of justice, rooted in his utilitarianism. Mill’s attachment to justice arises in a particular context, as the result of various intellectual influences. On the one hand, it underlies his concern for the situation of women on the labour market and his insistence on the role played by custom and laws in wage differences between men and women. On the other hand, the shortcomings of Mill’s analysis appear consistent with his vision of equal justice and freedom for women.     

Property and contract rights in autocracies and democracies

We present and test empirically a new theory of property and contract rights. Any incentive an autocrat has to respect such rights comes from his interest in future tax collections and national income and increases with his planning horizon. We find a compelling empirical relationship between property and contract rights and an autocrat's time in power. In lasting—but not in new—democracies, the same rule of law and individual rights that ensure continued free elections entail extensive property and contract rights. We show that the age of a democratic system is strongly correlated with property and contract rights.     

The Spitalfields Acts and the classics: Ricardo,J.S. Mill,Bowring, and Senior on the London silk industry (1823 to 1841)

Abstract

Passed in 1773, the Spitalfields Acts were the main regulation of the London silk industry. Classical political economy has generally been depicted as one of the main causes of their repeal, occuring in 1824. Recasting the successive interventions of Ricardo, Mill, Bowring and Senior in their respective political context, we show how they exhibit a shift in the discussions, from commercial to industrial issues. After Ricardo and Mill stressed the need to free the trade, Bowring pointed out the superior quality of French products. Senior relied on his work to emphasise the question of copyrights, which dominated his 1841 accounts.     

From Mill to Weber: the meaning of the concept of economic rationality

Weber recognized explicitly that his concept of ideal-type is directly borrowed from economic theory and as it is commonly admitted from the German-speaking ‘marginalist school’. Nevertheless, the construction of ideal-types reminds greatly the definition of economic rationality made by John Stuart Mill, who also built up a concept to explain, in individualistic terms, the real world in a given historical and geographical context. The position defended here is that Weber generalizes Mill's methodological proposition of concept formation regarding economic rationality to accomplish his much larger project of determining the social factors responsible for the rationalization of the Western civilization.     

Religion and the reception of marginalism in Britain

Did their religious beliefs play any role in the interest British economists took in marginal utility theory in the final third of the Nineteenth Century? I contrast the beliefs of the leading economists—Mill and his followers—who were unsympathetic to marginalism with the beliefs of those economists who embraced it. Mill’s followers were themselves sharply divided on key methodological questions, and I ask whether or not this division, too, may owe something to differing religious beliefs. I conclude, provisionally, that religion may indeed have played a significant role in determining the methodological predisposition of British economists between 1860 and 1900.     

Property rights,entrepreneurship and coordination

The notion of plan coordination enjoys a central place in the analysis of institutions and competitive market processes. The conventional wisdom is that institutions and policies vary in the extent to which they promote competition and how quickly and completely they bring individuals’ plans into closer coordination with one another. Kirzner has provided the most fully elaborated statement on the use of coordination as a positive analytical device for explaining market dynamics and as a normative criterion for evaluating economic policies. We identify the core propositions in his analysis that elucidate how economic coordination depends upon that most fundamental of market institutions – the system of private property rights. We also probe into Kirzner's claims about inherent limitations in our ability to compare the coordinative potential of alternative property rights systems. We unpack the consequences of these core propositions using the economic theory of property rights. We also examine Kirzner's assertion that dynamic competition – including Schumpeterian innovation – is necessarily coordinative in its market effects. We find that his argument rests on the implicit assumption that property rights remain constant during the process of market adjustment. We provide a case study of the advent of commercial aviation as a potential counterexample to his claims.     

J. S. Mill on Wages and Women: A Feminist Critique

"J. S. Mill on Wages and Women" questions the common belief that Mill, despite his feminism, never suggested an end to the sexual division of labor because of his devotion to the concept of efficiency and other tenets of classical economics. A review of Mill's analysis of a competitive labor market indicates that he believed it to be fully consistent with women's equality in the workforce. In fact, in his works on women, it becomes clear that Mill was concerned that the logical extension of classical economic principles might lead to the commodification of domestic duties, including child rearing, a notion he evidently feared. Therefore, it was Mill's fear of, rather than dedication to, extreme allegiance to efficiency and unimpeded capitalism that limited his feminism.     

The Issue of Efficiency and the Role of State in New Institutional Economics: A Critical Perspective

ABSTRACT

This article scrutinises and criticises the notion of efficiency and the role of state in the emergence and evolution of institutions and property rights within the tradition of new institutional economics. Specifically, the attempt is to criticise the efficiency view of the formation of property rights and institutions. It is shown that the efficiency concept cannot provide a sufficient rationale for explaining the origins of private property. Additionally, some recent developments of North's thought are critically scrutinised, showing that his theoretical apparatus could be conceived as a paradise for the eclectic. Further, the role of the state in different versions of the theory of property rights – with a special reference to North's treatment of the notion of state – is, also, critically examined. Although North’s work has virtues compared to the ‘naïve model’ of property rights by recognising and addressing the role of the state and the issue of power in the formation of property rights and institutions, he does not succeed in fully accounting for the existence of institutional arrangements, due to his adherence to an individualist framework.     

A libertarian theory of rights and future generations

The central question in preserving the rights of future generations is how to ground a theory of rights that is also acceptable to the present generation, including staunch Republicans, without self-contradiction. Such a theory of rights consists of the three principles of a minimalist liberatarian theory (that of Robert Nozick), and demonstrates that environmental degradation is a violation of this theory of rights; a theory that is compatible with a free enterprise corporate culture. It is shown that no appeal to liberalism is necessary. It is shown that the case is not based on some ideals of justice but on three politically conservative principles that all modern societies accept as being fundamental to the continuation of those societies. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Cornell University and at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Berlin. I would like to thank Dr Udo E. Simonis for his helpful comments, but I alone am responsible for any remaining errors. This research is financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant#410-94-1221.     

Mill'S Affirmation of the Classical Wage Fund Doctrine

Commentaries on Mill's¹ recantation have variously and loosely interpreted his retraction within an institutional context (Kurer, 1993), as a tract on policy reform (Schwartz, 1972, esp. pp. 68–69, 90–101; West and Hafer, 1978, 1981), as a calculated political act (Forget, 1992), as part of a scientific research programme (Vint, 1994, esp. pp. 1–7, 212–248), or as broadly revisionist (Hollander, 1968a, 1984, 1985, pp. 262–263, 409–417; Ekelund, 1976, 1985; Ekelund and Kordmeier, 1981; Negishi, 1985a, 1985b). Although these writers differ on many points of detail, they all agree that Mill explicitly and unconditionally abandoned the wage fund doctrine. What is striking here is that the 'recantation interpretation' has gone entirely unchallenged by historians of economics. In this paper we challenge received opinion on this point and argue that Mill in fact affirmed the doctrine in his Fortnightly Review article .     

风险企业的道德风险与控制权配置的模型分析

风险企业的控制权配制是在满足风险企业家激励相容和风险投资家参与约束条件下的一种相机性配置机制,它有别于 传统理论要求的"剩余索取权必须与控制权相匹配"的配置原则,能使双方在签约后根据企业绩效(或企业风险)的变动,进行相 应的权利调整,因而尽可能地解决了风险企业中的风险分担和激励问题。     

Knowledge at work: Some neoliberal anachronisms

With a predilection for market solutions, neoliberalism upholds that the individual is generally the best judge of his or her interests. Yet markets are never universally applied as a mechanism of allocation and there are reasons, in principle, why capitalism will always have “missing markets.” Concentrating on the application and appropriateness of neoliberal theory to the workplace, this article argues that firms are not markets, despite some tendencies in modern theory to conflate the two. The employment contract is a key characteristic of modern firms, but neoliberal theory is often silent on the distinction between an employment contract and a contract for services, and largely ignores the asymmetrical rights of authority within contracts of employment. Furthermore, the social nature of knowledge represents a challenge to neoliberal theory and policy, because it sometimes makes it more difficult to define individual property rights. Accordingly, with the growth of the knowledge economy, neoliberalism to some extent is an anachronism.     

我国旅游资源产权问题探析

旅游企业产权明晰问题已逐渐被社会认同，而旅游资源产权明晰问题却未受到应有重视。我国旅游资源产权界定不清，产权制度安排不合理，已在某种程度上束缚和妨碍了我国旅游资源的合理利用和旅游业的进一步发展。旅游资源产权问题成为近期旅游界的一个热点话题。文章主要运用俱乐部理论、资源价值理论、产权理论等，从深层次上对我国旅游资源产权不明晰的成因进行了分析，并对构建我国现代旅游资源产权制度提出了一些建议。     

Hayek’s 1945 Finlay Memorial Lecture: Tracing the origins and evolution of his ‘true’ individualism

Hayek’s original 1945 University College Dublin lecture outlined the origins and evolution of two different interpretations of ‘individualism’, comparing and contrasting what Hayek terms ‘true’ and ‘false’ individualism notwithstanding the misleading contemporary interpretations and distorted perceptions of the assumptions underlining ‘true’ individualism. Hayek developed and extended the Scottish Enlightenment theory of spontaneous order originally formulated by Adam Ferguson’s maxim that social order was the result of unintended human action rather than the result of deliberate human design in order to explain the origin of complex social structures, which originated in a Cromwellian maxim. The origination and inspiration for the title of Hayek’s lecture is also considered, as is the influence of other thinkers; Mandeville, Tocqueville, Mill, Acton and Schatz that Hayek cites in his Dublin lecture.     

Is social justice for or against liberty? The philosophical foundations of Mill and Hayek’s theory of liberty

By comparing the philosophical foundations of Mill and Hayek’s theory of liberty, this paper shows that some similarities in the economic theories of Mill and Hayek are actually based on different rationales. It follows that any attempt to find a common thread in Mill and Hayek to provide reasonable guidance for social policy can be promising only if we can find the common ground from their social philosophy. While analyzing the rationales behind their opinions regarding the role of government and taxation policies, this paper will focus on exploring the role of two philosophical ideas, liberty, and justice. This will clarify the relationship between social justice and liberty as well as their status in relation to the ultimate principle of rules in the philosophy of Mill and Hayek. This paper will offer an explanation why, in Mill’s utilitarian philosophy, the pursuit of social justice aligns with the real freedom of everyone, but in Hayek’s philosophy, it is a hindrance.     

论私有产权的限制

私有产权的限制可从两个层次看:一是立宪层次上的限制,它是私有财产所有者被动接受的限制,包括禁止侵害他物权的限制和保护公共利益与实现政治需求的限制;二是法律上的私有产权界定后,私有产权所有者主动选择的限制,包括行使权利成本的限制和设立他物权的限制.保护公共利益与实现政治需求的限制抑制了私有产权、市场交换作为调节资源稀缺性与人类欲望无限性矛盾手段的力量;其他限制则是发挥市场机制配置资源,实现产值最大化的要求,为不是限制的限制.     

Concordian Economics: Tools to Return Relevance to Economics

With the help of planes and solids, this paper presents an enlargement of the field of observation of economic theory. Through this transformation, the distribution of ownership rights to money and wealth assumes a central position in economic analysis. Thus social relevance is returned to economics. The validity of this operation is confirmed by the return of the millenarian field of economic justice to its traditional function as guidance to economic policy. The paper then presents four sets of economic rights and responsibilities that offer the potential of translating principles of economic justice into the complexities of the modern world.