A Comparative Political Economy Approach to Farming Interest Groups in Australia and the United States

A bstract .   Commons ([1950] 1970 : 34) insisted that "economics should be the science of activity." In this tradition, the aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of farming interest groups on natural resource policy by using a comparative political economy approach. Special attention will be given to farming interest groups in Australia and the United States. Curiously, each group takes a very different ideological approach to promoting farming interests. Our contention is that each group tends to display values that were prominent during its formation. The ideology and thus behavior of interest groups cannot be isolated from the history, the economic conditions, and the changing alternatives open to individuals. It is very reasonable to argue that two groups with similar goals might pursue different means to the same ends; the different means simply reflect values that were important in the formation of the groups. As such, there might be a concerted effort of the farming interest group, based on history, economic conditions, and custom, to either encourage a higher degree of competition or protect against the degree of competition.     

Economists' Opinions of Economists' Work

A bstract .   Economists' credibility has been waning in recent years. Critics usually cite the profession's preoccupation with abstract reasoning and its focus on seemingly irrelevant topics that hold little interest for individuals outside the discipline. While economic science has enormous potential for improving living standards, the profession's adverse reputation is indicative of a discipline seemingly void of any social contribution. This article presents the results of a recently conducted survey of professional economists. The survey was undertaken to ascertain economists' opinions of their own professional work, including the progress of economic research, its usefulness for society, and factors that determine the publication of that research.     

Leonhard Miksch (1901–1950)

A bstract    German economist Leonhard Miksch's ideas on ordoliberalism have so far received little attention in the history of economic thought. This is surprising, as Miksch provides insights into the debates within the so-called "Freiburg School of Law and Economics" in its early phase and, moreover, gave impulses that were essential to the further development of this economic approach. In addition, as a close advisor to Ludwig Erhard, the "political father" of the German "Social Market Economy," his influence on German postwar economic policy was considerable.     

Max Weber and Economic Sociology

A bstract .   Peukert (2004 ) argues that Weber's work is only of limited relevance to present-day economic sociology because it incorporates "a rather narrow and static understanding of rationality and the economy." This article disputes that claim. It is argued that Weber differentiates between economic and sociological perspectives on the economy through incorporating uncertainty into the latter. Hence Weber's economic sociology develops the distinction between "before" and "after" perspectives on action, incorporates expectations, and defines capital with reference to time and uncertainty. Furthermore, Weber's analysis of formal rationality presupposes uncertainty. Weber's economic sociology thus assumes a dynamic economy, where uncertainty is prevalent, and formal rationality can reduce uncertainty. Peukert's analysis thus (a) fails to consider Weber's differentiation between economic and sociological investigations, and (b) does not engage with Weber's knowledge of Austrian economics.     

Does the Henry George Theorem Provide a Practical Guide to Optimal City Size?

A bstract .   The spatial distribution of economic activity is determined by a balancing of increasing and decreasing returns to scale activities. The Henry George Theorem states roughly that, if economic activity is efficiently organized over a "large" space, aggregate land rents equal the aggregate losses from the decreasing returns to scale activities. Kanemoto, Ohkawara, and Suzuki have tentatively applied the Henry George Theorem to investigate whether Tokyo has too large a population. This paper has two aims. The first is to explore the Theorem and its generality; the second is to examine whether it provides a promising conceptual foundation for estimating whether particular cities are over- or underpopulated.     

Hermeneutics and the Heidegger = Schumpeter Theses

This paper is a part of an attempt to develop an economic philosophy of ontology based on the Continental tradition of hermeneutics. Ontology explores the meanings of entities as the objects of knowledge to posit the orientation of knowledge. Heidegger developed hermeneutical ontology, focusing on the self-understanding of Dasein (human beings), which consists of the "projection" of its possibilities into the future and the "thrownness" of it into the restrictions by the past history. Dealing explicitly with the pre-structure of knowledge, hermeneutics opens the perspective of knowledge much broader than permitted by the analytical tradition of philosophy. It is the contention of this paper that Schumpeter from the Austrian subjectivist circle could cope with this approach in social science by the use of the concepts of "innovation and tradition" or "creation and routine." The paper discusses the relationship between Heidegger and Schumpeter on various philosophical issues and derives what might be called the Heidegger = Schumpeter theses.     

A Note on Walter Block's Defending the Undefendable

A bstract .   Walter Block's amusing and popular Defending the Undefendable offers an intentionally shocking collection of short chapters, each praising a different "rogue" of modern society—including the pimp, slumlord, and corrupt cop—from a libertarian viewpoint. However, Block's defense of the "heroic" counterfeiter is based on faulty economic analysis and is hence completely unwarranted.     

'Value Freedom' and the Scope of Economic Inquiry: II. The Fact/Value Continuum and the Basis for Scientific and Humanistic Policy

A bstract . Underlying the view of economic methodologists that the economist in his professional capacity is prohibited from making value judgments concerning policy ends is the assumption that there exists an irreducible gap between statements of fact and value judgments, such that value judgments are incapable of receiving support on the basis of scientific inquiry. Once a strict fact/value dualism is seen to be untenable, and once it is recognized that value judgments can be grounded in human needs and interests, the standard "purist" conception of the scope of economic inquiry can be rejected in favor of a "humanist" conception. It is argued that adoption of the wider "humanist" conception of the proper goals of economic inquiry is an important step in the development of an economic science responsive to the basic needs, interests, and aspirations of human beings.     

The Global System of Finance

A bstract .   In the last decades, revolutionary changes in financial markets, instruments, and institutions have stimulated empirical and theoretical investigations into the interaction of the financial and the "real" side of economic systems. While a considerable body of empirical investigations seems to provide evidence of positive correlations between stock market development and economic growth, there is no consensus in other social sciences as to whether there are two-way linkages, and if so, how to conceive a possible mechanism of interaction. Particularly, the hypergrowth and ubiquity of financial markets has triggered controversial debates on how to understand today's economic landscape. With the objective of clarifying the relationship between finance and economy, this article restructures the present debate through the lenses of Talcott Parsons's and Niklas Luhmann's theories of social systems. Basic system-theoretical ideas on social aspects of finance and economy as well as on uncertainty and risk hint at new insights into the global system of finance that might go far beyond explanatory models of causality.     

工具经济边际与生命科学宣言

三大事件表明工具经济发展边际的到来,决定人类经济形态由此走向目的经济即生命科学经济时代。其意义不仅在于工具经济所面临的各种危机可以得到有效克服,而且可以明晰中国经济转型升级的基本方向。实际上,生命科学已经对人类经济文明起到了引领作用,原因就在于人的需求是无限的。更为重要的是,只有到了生命科学经济时代,资源不再仅仅只有加工、生产和耗费的价值,其内在的多重价值都能得到充分的展现,地球生态也由此才能取得可持续发展的效应。而东方文明,由于其系统思维和"抽象具体"的思辨逻辑,以及在生命科学范畴内的研究成果,将引领人类经济文明未来的发展方向。     

Social Anthropology in Economic Literature at the End of the 19th Century: Eugenic and Racial Explanations of Inequality

A bstract .   At the end of the 19^th century, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Otto Ammon founded a school of thought denominated "social anthropology" or "anthropo-sociology," aimed at placing racism on a scientific basis. Their intent was to create a new discipline into which the themes of biological heredity, natural selection, social stratification, and political organization were to converge. This paper intends to demonstrate the wide resonance that anthroposociology had in the economic literature, analyzing the thought of authors such as Carlos C. Closson, Vilfredo Pareto, and Thorstein Veblen. A particular focus will be on the racial and eugenic arguments used as explanation of social and economic inequality.     

A Socio-Dynamic Understanding of Markets

A bstract    Economic sociology furthers a healthy alternative to price-theory–oriented economics as it sets out to remedy the invisibility of the market within the latter. There is, however, no doubt that such a market-oriented sociology is still in its infancy, given among other issues its inability to shoulder market change. The void thus recognized opens up the potential for a market idea with both social and dynamic properties. There is good reason to believe that such an endeavor would benefit from the constructive blending of economic sociology and Austrian economics. This paper argues that such a "socio-Austrian" connection is in the position to enrich the socioeconomic discourse in general and its market conception in particular.     

Irving Fisher and the Contribution of Improved Longevity to Living Standards

A bstract    It is not widely recognized that conventional measures of national income and output exclude the value of improvements in the health status of the population. The present study discusses the theory of the measurement of national income, proposes a new concept called "health income" that can be used to incorporate improvements in health status, and applies the theory to data for the United States over the 20^th century. It concludes that accounting for improvements in the health status would, over the twentieth century in the United States, make a substantial difference to our measures of economic welfare.     

Nonrenewable Exhaustible Resources and Property Taxation

A bstract .   In this paper, Professor Harriss connects the historic debate about using up nonrenewable resources and its impacts on future generations with the need to help finance government in less disruptive ways. He explains the Georgist program of taxing "economic rents" either directly by a rent tax or indirectly by a severance tax.     

Protecting Family and Race

A bstract    American economics came of age during the Progressive Era, a time when biological approaches to economic reform were at their high-water mark. Reform-minded economists argued that the labor force should be rid of unfit workers—whom they labeled "unemployables,""parasites," and the "industrial residuum"—so as to uplift superior, deserving workers. Women were also frequently classified as unemployable. Leading progressives, including women at the forefront of labor reform, justified exclusionary labor legislation for women on grounds that it would (1) protect the biologically weaker sex from the hazards of market work; (2) protect working women from the temptation of prostitution; (3) protect male heads of household from the economic competition of women; and (4) ensure that women could better carry out their eugenic duties as "mothers of the race." What united these heterogeneous rationales was the reformers' aim of discouraging women's labor-force participation.     

Culture and Economic Systems

A bstract .   Applying a cluster analysis to the results of the World Value Study, this article shows that the OECD nations have five distinct patterns of cultural characteristics. Moreover, these five cultural systems are almost the same as a classification of economic systems that have been derived from a cluster analysis of their economic institutions. A comparison of the cultural characteristics of East and West Germany suggests that the economic system has relatively little influence on the cultural systems. Instead, in a democracy, where the economic system is not imposed by force, the cultural characteristics are more likely to determine the economic system, rather than the reverse.     

When Did Equality Become a Noneconomic Objective?

A bstract .   This brief survey begins with a suggested procedure for determining whether a given economist viewed a particular goal as an economic or noneconomic objective. Roughly speaking, the approach rests on whether that economist attempted a serious analysis of the tradeoffs between the goal in question and some measure of value. In this view, noneconomic objectives, for any school, include all those objectives that, while recognized as potentially legitimate, are not analyzed in terms of commensurable value measures. Three points to notice about the definition: (1) For any economist, economic objectives should be distinguished from a class of intermediate goods valued largely for their predicted positive impact on production; (2) Some objectives may be altogether dismissed by a school, either as beyond the expertise of economic analysis or as downright harmful; (3) Simply acknowledging the existence of a "cost" to achieving a goal leaves that goal as noneconomic since no attempt at valuation has been made.
The paper goes on to sketch three viewpoints toward income equality—that of the classical school as summarized in the work of J. S. Mill, that of the early neoclassicists as represented by Marshall and Pigou, and that of the "new welfare economics" as developed by Kaldor and Hicks. The classical economists valued the relief of poverty, but explicitly attacked anything but the most basic redistributional efforts because of expected dire effects on production. The early neoclassicists built equality implicitly into a utilitarian social welfare function. The "new welfare economics" doubted economists' ability to assess the value of equality, although perhaps not their ability to measure its opportunity cost. Thus the basic argument: both the classicists and the early neoclassicists saw equality as an economic objective, while the new welfare economics was largely built on denying this status to equality.     

What Do Economists Talk About? A Linguistic Analysis of Published Writing in Economic Journals

A bstract .   The present study aims to add to our knowledge about economic rhetoric by conducting a data-driven analysis of economic academic discourse, both synchronically in its contemporary form, and diachronically over the past four decades. We find (1) that linguistically, economics is clearly an academic genre of its own, (2) that there are at the same time clear differences in vocabulary and style usage across economic journals, and (3) that there have been major developments in economic prose during the past four decades. We argue that there is some, albeit tentative, evidence that the discipline may face an increasing methodological gap.     

Adolph Lowe's Methodological Alternative for Economic Research and Policy

A bstract . Social scientists and philosophers are engaged in a profound re-examination of the foundations of economic science. Among them the economist, Adolph Lowe , opened a new vista. First, in his Economics and Sociology: A Plea for Cooperation in the Social Sciences (1935) he argued compellingly for a unified social science. Lowe introduced there the concept of " instrumental analysis " which he greatly modified in On Economic Knowledge (1965) and applied to a major issue of contemporary economics in The Path of Economic Growth (1976). Instrumental analysis is intended to achieve a system of " political economics ," a theory for deriving one or more paths—a sequence of positions—over which an initial state of an economy can be transformed into a terminal state—a goal itself stipulated by political decision. Instrumental analysis is also used to determine measures of public control to achieve the behavioral pattern suitable to set and keep the system on the goal-adequate trajectory.     

Echoes of Henry George in Modern Analysis

A bstract .   These comments were prepared in response to the session "Echoes of Henry George in Modern Analysis" presented at the 2002 meetings of the Southern Economic Association. Professor Holcombe prepared his comments at this journal's request at a later time.