Capabilities and Constraints

Sen’s capability approach emphasises the importance of freedom and choice in leading the life that one values. This paper seeks to argue that, nonetheless, the capability approach is fully cognisant of the constraints that restrict individuals from achieving capabilities. Since the achievement of capabilities is set within a social context, and also because the constraints to capability-achievement are often of a social nature, it is useful to keep in mind the social context. An account of the capability approach that places adequate stress on the constraints that confront individuals and the institutional context will describe their situation more accurately; it will also be of more use for policy purposes.     

Capabilities and Constraints

Sen’s capability approach emphasises the importance of freedom and choice in leading the life that one values. This paper seeks to argue that, nonetheless, the capability approach is fully cognisant of the constraints that restrict individuals from achieving capabilities. Since the achievement of capabilities is set within a social context, and also because the constraints to capability-achievement are often of a social nature, it is useful to keep in mind the social context. An account of the capability approach that places adequate stress on the constraints that confront individuals and the institutional context will describe their situation more accurately; it will also be of more use for policy purposes.     

CAPABILITIES AS FUNDAMENTAL ENTITLEMENTS: SEN AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Amartya Sen has made a major contribution to the theory of social justice, and of gender justice, by arguing that capabilities are the relevant space of comparison when justice-related issues are considered. This article supports Sen's idea, arguing that capabilities supply guidance superior to that of utility and resources (the view's familiar opponents), but also to that of the social contract tradition, and at least some accounts of human rights. But I argue that capabilities can help us to construct a normative conception of social justice, with critical potential for gender issues, only if we specify a definite set of capabilities as the most important ones to protect. Sen's "perspective of freedom" is too vague. Some freedoms limit others; some freedoms are important, some trivial, some good, and some positively bad. Before the approach can offer a valuable normative gender perspective, we must make commitments about substance.     

Capabilities,human development,and design thinking: a framework for gender-sensitive entrepreneurship programs

This paper discusses the ways that capabilities and human development theory can guide the creation of entrepreneurship programs, utilizing a framework of human-centered design thinking. It is well known that a variety of institutional factors shape gender outcomes and gender inequality within entrepreneurship, particularly with regard to necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship and informal versus formal sector entrepreneurship. Failure to understand the diversity of entrepreneurial activity among women, and the connection (or lack thereof) of such activity to human freedom, leads to biased entrepreneurship programs. This paper links social economic theory and practice by: (1) discussing the ways that capabilities and human development theory relate to entrepreneurship programs; (2) demonstrating that human-centered design thinking reflects the capabilities approach; and (3) showing how the design thinking framework would be used to create a gender-sensitive entrepreneurship program.     

经济自由及其变动的增长效应——来自跨国经济增长面板数据的再检视

经济自由是市场经济的基础，是社会基础设施（Social Infrastructure）的核心内涵。经济自由的提升有利于提高存量资本的生产配置效率，并对国内外投资给出积极信号，推动经济增长。本文在新古典经济增长理论框架下，研究各国社会基础设施发展水平的不同及其转型动态，用近百个国家的增长面板数据验证经济自由水平及其提升的增长效应。此外，本文还用动态面板数据的GMM估计方法检验发现，经济自由是经济增长的Granger原因，而后者不是前者的Granger原因。该结论对发展中国家的经济发展政策具有指导意义。     

Economic freedom and social capital

This article brings together two growing literatures, social capital and economic freedom, to examine whether economic freedom contributes to social capital. More specifically, using US state-level data from 1986 to 2004 and both OLS and System GMM dynamic panel estimation, we find that there is no clear trade-off between economic freedom and either the level or growth of social capital.     

Economic Freedom and the Quality of Life: An Empirical Analysis

Previous empirical research on the social and economic impact of freedom has tended to focus on the link between freedom and economic growth rates. Only a few studies have looked at freedom's effect on the quality of life, and these generally focused on the effect of political freedom. Here, we attempt to bridge this gap by analyzing the effect of economic freedom on the quality of life. Taking advantage of newly developed measures of economic freedom, we analyze the impact of economic freedom on life expectancy and literacy rates. We find that greater economic freedom enhances the quality of life both across nations and increases the improvements in the quality of life over time.     

Economic freedom and social capital: pooled mean group evidence

This article uses annual US-state-level data from 1986 to 2004 and pooled-mean group estimation based on Pesaran et al. (1999) to examine whether economic freedom influences social capital. We find economic freedom has a negative effect on our social capital measure. This result is driven by the labour market component of freedom which is indicative of the relationship between labour market freedom and Olson-type group social capital.     

Conditional factors Pushing catch-up across developed and emerging countries in the nanotechnology sector, 2000–2010

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to test national and sectorial technological and innovation capability factors, as well as social capability indicators, which could explain a possible conditional convergence across countries in nanotechnology within the context of a model of innovative technological knowledge β convergence. Based on growth convergence models, our proposal also takes into account the Schumpeterian theory, the National System Innovation –NSI– approach, and particularly the sectorial system of innovation and the technological catch-up hypothesis, as well as theoretical and empirical literature on conditional convergence. The findings allow us to confirm that new nanotechnology knowledge convergence is conditioned by a higher growth rate of technological capabilities in nanotechnology: growth from the initial level of patents granted, cumulative knowledge, and links to technological and scientific activities. Finally, as regards social capabilities, only the institutional weakness variable (corruption index) associates negatively with β convergence. As an emergent paradigm, we realize that convergence and catch-up are starting processes, which could allow less technologically developed countries to benefit from higher growth of some of the factors identified.     

Capabilities and Functionings: The Role of Social Capital for Accessing New Capabilities

This paper connects two relatively recent streams of research in social science: the capabilities approach and the literature on social capital. The aim is to show that these are strictly connected in a dynamic process linking functionings and capabilities through social capital. The ability to attain new capabilities is enhanced by the possession of social capital; hence investing in its accumulation allows individuals to improve their welfare. Furthermore, new capabilities allow the individual to create new connections and access new networks, accruing his or her stock of social capital and opening the door to the possibility of attaining new capabilities. The paper hypothesizes that a dynamic spiral interweaves social capital, capabilities and functionings.     

阿马蒂亚•森的" 能力方法" 在发展经济学中的应用

1998年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者阿马蒂亚•森首先创立了" 能力方法" 的分析框架,并把发展定义为人类能力的扩展和自由的增进。森的" 能力方法" 对联合国的人类发展报告产生了重大影响。在森的基础上," 能力方法" 得到了一定程度的拓展。森的" 能力方法" 对我国发展计划和政策的制定具有一定的借鉴意义。     

收入分配:经济增长抑或“人的发展”——一个基于自由发展观的分析

"以自由看待发展"的观点将人的实质自由的扩展作为经济发展的内涵和目的,是"人的发展"思想下的一种系统理论。按照自由发展观,收入分配在经济发展中的重要作用主要体现在对自由的建构性作用和工具性作用的影响上。当前,我国收入分配出现的整体性、系统性失衡的严重问题对于"人的发展"的实现产生了极为深刻的影响,主要包括引发低收入群体自由的损害,劳动者可行能力降低,自由行使成本上升,发展方向偏离,中等收入群体发展受到制约等。因此,必须通过"人的自由发展的收入分配观"的树立和收入分配政策创新实现人的自由发展。     

Foreign direct investment,economic freedom and economic growth: International evidence

In this paper, we investigate the systemic link between economic freedom, foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in a panel of 85 countries. Our empirical results, based on the generalized method-of-moment system estimator, reveal that FDI by itself has no direct (positive) effect on output growth. Instead, the effect of FDI is contingent on the level of economic freedom in the host countries. This means the countries promote greater freedom of economic activities gain significantly from the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs).     

On competing theories of economic growth: cross-country evidence

In the recent literature on economic growth, four approaches compete to explain growth trends in per capita GDP of the world set of countries: (1) the Solovian approach; (2) the New Theory of Endogenous Growth; (3) the Abramovitz–Baumol ‘catching up’ approach; (4) the Kaldor approach of increasing returns and cumulative causation. Approaches (3) and (4) are formalized here in a single model and then tested against approaches (1) and (2) on a common database and sample of countries. The main conclusions are the following: that labour is not the limiting factor on growth, as implied by (1) and (2); that catching up is an important and a non-declining process; that increasing returns to output rather than to capital are very important and accelerate the catch-up with the US trend; that a lack of social capabilities and technological push may reverse catching up into falling behind with respect to the US productivity level; and that the pattern of growth changes between 1960–73 and 1973–88 because physical investment becomes less important while R&D becomes more important, and because cumulative causation through export growth ceases.     

AID, ECONOMIC FREEDOM, AND GROWTH

Foreign aid has often been intended by donors to entice recipient nations into policy and institutional reforms favorable to private sector economic development. In this study, we investigate the relationship between aid and changes to economic freedom in recipient nations over the 1990–2000 decade. The evidence is mixed. In general, we find that foreign aid has no significant effect on economic freedom overall. However, using a hedonic approach on the different categories of economic freedom, we find that aid has still managed to contribute toward a policy and institutional environment favorable to growth, as the different categories of economic freedom improved by aid more than offset those which are harmed by aid, in terms of their impact on growth . ( JEL 010, 019)     

Religion and Economic Development in History: Institutions and the Role of Religious Networks

I argue that the role of religion on economic performance is mainly through the networks of small religious groups. These groups form social networks that enable individuals to conduct non-formal contract enforcement mechanisms. I analyze the effects of religions on societies, focusing mainly on the institutional aspects that affect the capabilities of creating social capital via networks which enhance cooperation and decrease transaction costs. Since the interaction between institutions and organizations is expected to shape the institutional evolution and economic performance of an economy, religions that have a communal form of organization rather than a vertical (hierarchical) structure, thus allowing many different denominational sub-communities within a society, can be more beneficiary for development and growth. Such institutions may not only provide allocative and production efficiency, but also adaptive efficiency that is a key to long-run growth. However, these effects may turn negative depending on these institutions’ role in causing group hostility and exclusion.     

The effect of economic freedom on growth revisited: New evidence on causality from a panel of countries 1970–1999

Does economic freedom cause economic growth or does causality run in the reverse direction? And do all the constituent parts of economic freedom exert a causal impact on economic growth or do some freedoms matter more than others? In order to answer these questions, this paper conducts a series of Granger causality tests using panel data for the period 1970–1999. In addition, the paper discusses a number of model specification issues, e.g. lag-length selection and the importance of intervening variables. The results suggest that some (but not all) aspects economic freedom affect economic growth and investment. On the other hand, there is only weak evidence that growth affects economic freedom.     

ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND GROWTH IN U.S. STATE‐LEVEL MARKET INCOMES AT THE TOP AND BOTTOM

This paper investigates the relationship between economic freedom and income growth and inequality across U.S. states over the period 1979–2011. The focus is on market income at the top and bottom of the income distribution. Results show that increases in overall freedom are associated with average income growth. When viewed separately, an increase in overall freedom is associated with larger income growth rates for income earners in the bottom 90% relative to the top 10%. Interestingly, results show that increases in overall economic freedom are related to larger relative growth rates for the top 10% incomes within high‐income states and larger relative growth rates for the bottom 90% incomes within low‐income states. Top‐to‐bottom income ratio regressions suggest a negative and statistically significant relationship between economic freedom and income inequality. (JEL D63, P16, R11)     

Freedom of Choice and Poverty Alleviation

The Capability Approach (henceforth CA) views poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon that is not only characterised by lows levels of achievement in the various dimensions but also by a restricted opportunity to choose among different ways of life. The CA thus puts a lot of emphasis on (limited) freedom of choice as a crucial aspect of poverty. If poverty is seen in this way there are two ways to improve the situation of the poor: by broadening the set of opportunities open to them or by strengthening their ability to choose. The paper concentrates on the latter. Although the CA discusses several possibilities for strengthening the ability to choose it does not explicitly consider the role of enhancing the capability of choosing as a means of poverty alleviation. The paper summarizes which circumstances are seen in the CA as suitable for strengthening freedom of choice. Namely, the paper discusses the market as an institution that trains the ability to choose, democracy as a political institution that is based on freedom of choice and participatory methods as an attempt to build explicitly on freedom of choice of the participants. Two shortcomings in the theoretical conceptualization of freedom of choice in the CA are identified by discussing these institutions and circumstances: first, the interplay between social structures and individual agency is not modelled in much detail within the CA. Second, the CA does not provide an explicitly temporal model of agency. The paper takes a closer look at these shortcomings from a sociological perspective since the questions they raise are core questions of sociology. The problems are intertwined. In order to tackle the problem of social embedding in the CA one needs to introduce time and processes as well. Sociological approaches show how social structures evolve from the interaction of individuals. The paper gives an example of how sociological concepts of this interaction can be used for drawing a model of social work for strengthening the agency of the poor. The paper proceeds as follows: first the view of poverty as capability deprivation is presented. The second section gives an overview of the areas in which the CA discusses the strengthening of individual choice: the market, democracy and participatory projects. The third section elaborates on the shortcomings of the CA identified in the preceding section from a sociological perspective and introduces a concept of social work developed in a similar theoretical context. The conclusion summarizes the lessons and outlines further lines of research.     

ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND INCOME LEVELS ACROSS U.S. STATES: A SPATIAL PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

There is a large literature estimating the effect of economic freedom on economic growth or income levels. Most studies examine the relationship between economic freedom and growth or income levels for countries, while a few examine the relationship for U.S. states. Absent in the state‐level literature is consideration of the presence of spatial spillovers affecting the freedom‐income relationship. Neglecting to account for spatial autocorrelation can bias estimation results and therefore inferences drawn. We find evidence of a spatial pattern in real per‐capita gross state product (GSP) that affects nonspatial estimates of the freedom‐income relationship. Taking into account the direct and indirect effects of economic freedom on real per‐capita GSP, we find a 10% increase in economic freedom is associated with a 5% increase in real per‐capita GSP. (JEL E02, O47, R11)