Economic Ideas and Institutional Change: The Case of the Russian Stabilisation Fund

An intense discussion is taking place in international political economy on the influence of economic ideas on institutional change. Case studies so far have, however, mainly focused on the Western industrialised countries and research seems to be biased towards cases in which new ideas caused lasting institutional change. The present paper addresses these two shortcomings by analysing the case of the Russian Stabilisation Fund (SF). This case is an example both of the impact of global ideas on a non-Western emerging country and of a ‘near miss’ in the sense that imported neoliberal ideas failed to assert themselves enduringly. Paradoxically, it can be shown how the neoliberally based idea of the SF even contributed to the return to Soviet patterns of industrial policy. The main reason for this, we argue, is that the Fund's implementation was not preceded by economic and political debates. Accordingly, the imported institution of the SF had to be filled with ideational content after its implementation.     

Property and Economic Power as Issues in Institutional Economics

In the first part of this two-part paper, I presented an "irenic" reconciliation of the three apparently contradictory definitions of "institution" within original institutional economics (OIE), employing the methodology of critical institutionalism. The critical institutionalist reconciliation of these definitions conceptualizes institutions as an emergent process by which the internal and necessary relations of social structure as collective action, mediated through agency, results in the control, expansion, and liberation of the individual action of social actors in transactions. In short, an institution is the emergent process of social structure actualized in transactions (social action). Institutions, therefore, not only have a structural existence, but also an actual existence as they are the process of the emergence of the actual (in transactions) from the structural. Institutions are multi-level processes and cannot be reduced to structures, actions, behaviors, or patterns of behaviors. In this part, I demonstrate the significance of this reconciliation in two areas. The first is its ability to further differentiate the institutional definition of economics as "the science of social provisioning" from the mainstream definition of economics as "a relationship between ends and scarce means" by decomposing the institutional definition into its productive and distributive processes. The second is its usefulness in modeling the interaction of non-economic social institutions with economic institutions at varying levels of detail. I also introduce critical institutional analysis, and use as a method, for model-building and use it to build models of communal, feudal, and industrial capitalist economies.     

From Big Bang to Big Crash: The Early Origins of the UK’s Finance-led Growth Model and the Persistence of Bad Policy Ideas

Using newly declassified documents from the British Public Records Office, we argue that the finance-dependent growth regime that typified the UK economy in the period up to the Great Crash of 2008 has much deeper roots than is commonly realised. We use these documents to demonstrate that the growth of finance was integral to the Thatcher revolution, tying together mortgage markets, household debt, and boom-bust cycles as early as the mid-1980s. We also show how policy-makers in this period were aware of all the weaknesses of this growth model, to the point that they effectively diagnosed what would happened in 2008, back in 1987. We argue that selecting for a finance-led growth model as the preferred growth model so early effectively rendered other possible growth models for the UK unattainable. The result was the shift from an economy characterised by ‘stop-go’ cycles in the post-war period to an economy characterised by recurrent ‘boom-slump-austerity-reset’ cycles in the Thatcher and post Thatcher periods. The 2008 crisis did not change this highly unstable mode of accumulation.     

制度变迁、金融结构与经济增长--基于中国的实证研究

本文采用理论分析与实证分析相结合的研究方法,从理论上分析了制度变迁、金融结构调整与经济增长三者之间的相互作用机理;从实证上通过在金融结构与经济增长模型中引入能够综合反映制度变迁的制度变量,验证了国家制度变迁对一国金融结构与经济增长会起到促进或制约的作用.当制度供给与金融结构和经济增长对制度的需求达到均衡时,国家制度安排会优化金融结构、促进经济增长,否则便会出现规模与效率的"反比"现象,从而回答了转型国家规模与效率的悖论问题,进而给出了我国金融结构升级的选择路径及相关政策建议.     

Institutional Economics as Theory of Policy Change: Impact of Past Policy Failures on Present Policy

Social scientists have developed several theories for understanding or evaluating policy change over time. Since all costs or benefits are not internalized owing to positive transaction costs, policymaking is always implemented under cost underestimation conditions and, therefore, is imperfect. I call this trait policy failure in this article. Furthermore, I show that a new framework combining the social costs approach and the legal/economic approach in institutional economics is suitable and can be applied to evaluating how past policy failures affect present policy, providing as an example the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.     

制度变迁与经济增长质量:理论分析与计量检验

本文提出有效的制度变迁是经济增长质量变化的重要原因这一假说,论述了制度变迁对经济增长质量的作用机理,并依据1992-2007年数据检验了二者长期因果关系。结论是制度变迁是中国经济增长质量的长期格兰杰原因。中国经济增长质量总体呈上升趋势,但与经济增长速度并不同步。提高经济增长质量需要从制度方面加以型塑,逐步实现经济增长与质量提高进行同步。     

经济国有化与行政垄断制度的发展——基于制度变迁理论的经济史研究

文章在新制度经济学的理论框架下,对新中国的经济国有化和行政垄断制度的发展历程进行了经验研究。研究结果表明,行政垄断与国有经济存在很强的共生关系。当今中国的行政垄断是以法律法规形式存在的社会正式规则,它与国有经济、市场经济长期稳定共存,是转轨时期中国经济制度的一大特色。     

The Institutionalist Roots of Macroprudential Ideas: Veblen and Galbraith on Regulation,Policy Success and Overconfidence

One consequence of the global financial crisis has been to prompt debate over macroprudential regulation – meant to limit private risk-taking that threatens systemic stability. In this paper, we stress the roots of macroprudential ideas in the Institutionalist economics of Veblen and Galbraith in a way that highlights both unrecognised policy possibilities and underappreciated impediments to policy effectiveness, arguing in particular that regulatory success can breed overconfidence. First, we argue that while Veblen's views anticipated macroprudential arguments, they also obscured tensions between the technocratic acumen of policy ‘engineers’ and popular legitimacy. Second, we argue that while Galbraith's views similarly shaped the postwar Keynesian policy mix, they also echoed Veblen in underrating the potential for populist resentment of an intellectual ‘technostructure’. We conclude that while this analysis can be seen as highlighting an overlooked century of macroprudential debate, it also demonstrates the potential for technocratic overconfidence – which can eventually undermine policy legitimacy and effectiveness.     

Automation,Financialization, and Institutional Change: Challenges for Progressive Policy

Abstract:

This article argues that the issue of “technological unemployment” resulting from automation is the result of ceremonial encapsulation within the process of progressive institutional adjustment. While institutions of production have adjusted to account for new technological developments, institutions of distribution have not. As discussed here, the main cause of this lack of adjustment is a financialized economy, in which shareholder returns motivate and dominate economic decision making and activity. As a result, gains and benefits from technological advances exacerbate existing income inequality and reduces the power of labor. I discuss this issue in detail before explaining how progressive policies that divorce private wage-labor from access to the system of social provisioning may serve to smooth this process of institutional adjustment caused by the introduction of automated processes.     

欧债危机的现状评估、政策选择与演进前景

文章首先评估了欧债危机的发展现状,包括欧洲危机的演进历程、潜在冲击以及对欧洲银行业造成的挑战;其次剖析了当前应对欧债危机的各种政策选择,包括利用EFSF/ESM机制、IMF的参与、发行欧洲债券以及由ECB担任最后贷款人,并分析了各种政策选择面临的制约因素;最后展望了欧债危机的三种可能前景:财政一体化、欧元区解体以及维持现状,并指出财政一体化前景的概率最高。     

Habits of Thought and the Process of Economic Development: Remarks on Receiving the Veblen-Commons Award

Among the many insightful contributions of Thorstein Veblen and John R. Commons is that habits of thought matter. Habits of thought condition policy and place limits on what is possible. This article tackles five habits of thought that inhibit the process of economic development. These include: (i) the confusion of economic development with economic growth; (ii) the crowding-out hypothesis; (iii) the concept of the steady state economy; (iv) the peak oil hypothesis; and (v) the inevitability of economic progress. None of the discussions in this article are intended to minimize the importance of other very real constraints to the development process. A few of these other constraints are war, racism, sexism, political instability, corruption, and climate change.     

Economic Growth, TFP Convergence and the World Export of Ideas: A Century of Evidence

This paper examines the effect of international patent stock on total factor productivity for 16 OECD countries over the past 120 years. The results show that the international patent stock is highly influential for economic growth and, together with knowledge spillovers through the channel of imports, has contributed significantly to TFP growth and σ‐convergence among the OECD countries over the past 120 years.     

Varieties of Economic Crisis,Varieties of Ideational Change: How and Why Financial Regulation and Macroeconomic Policy Differ

One of the principal tasks facing post-crash academic political economy is to analyse patterns of ideational change and the conditions that produce such change. What has been missing from the existing literature on ideational change at times of crises however, is a sense of how processes of persuasive struggle, and how the success of those ‘norm entrepreneurs’ arguing for ideational change is shaped by two contextual variables: the most immediate material symptoms and problems that a crisis displays (the variety of crisis); and the institutional character of the policy subsystem that agents have to operate within to affect change. Introducing these two variables into our accounts of persuasive struggle and ideational change enables us to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of ideational change at times of crisis. The article identifies that a quite rapid and radical intellectual change has been evident in the field of financial regulation in the form of an embrace of a macroprudential frame. In contrast in the field of macroeconomic policy – both monetary and fiscal policy, many pre-crash beliefs remain prominent, there is evidence of ideational stickiness and inertia, and despite some policy experimentation, overarching policy frameworks and their rationales have not been overhauled. The article applies Peter Hall's framework of three orders of policy changes to help illuminate and explain the variation in patterns of change in the fields of financial regulation and macroeconomic policy since the financial crash of 2008. The different patterns of ideational change in macroeconomic policy and financial regulation in the post-crash period can be explained by timing and variety of crisis; sequencing of policy change; and institutional political differences between micro policy sub systems and macro policy systems.     

Policy Dimensions of Progressive Institutional Change: Lessons from China’s Construction of a Socialist Market Economy

Abstract:

Through a comprehensive review of the progressive institutional change (PIC) literature, I first discuss four possible trajectories of PIC by considering the forces of societal reaction that might frame the path, as well as the scale and scope of the changes. Thus, I pose four questions that need to be asked when related policies are formulated for PIC. To illustrate this method, I scrutinize the evidence from the construction of a socialist market economy by the Chinese government since the 1980s and argue that related policies have successfully promoted PIC from three dimensions: (1) curbing potential conflicts with power groups; (2) promoting a sense of awareness among stakeholders; and (3) minimizing disturbances to the community. Actually, the related changes demonstrate a dynamic “displacement process” for PICs. Despite the success of this sociosystem, it is found that the sustaining of PIC which requires policy factors that enhance instrumental efficiency in the Chinese context will serve as a challenge to the Chinese government ahead.     

Environment,Directed Technical Change and Economic Policy

We study the effects of an economic policy in an endogenous growth general equilibrium framework where production of consumption goods requires two resource inputs: a polluting non-renewable resource and a non-polluting labour resource. The use of the former contributes to the accumulation of pollution in the atmosphere, which affects welfare. There is a specific research sector associated with each of those resources. We provide a full welfare analysis, and we describe the equilibrium paths in a decentralized economy. We go on to study the effects of three associated economic policy tools: a tax on the polluting resource, and two research subsidies. We show that the optimal environmental policy has two main effects; it delays the extraction of the resource and with it the level of polluting emissions and it reallocates research efforts, decreasing the amount put into “grey” research to the benefit of “green” research. We also show that the environmental policy is grey-biased in the short-term, and green-biased in the long-term. Finally, we compute the optimal values for these tools.      

经济虚拟化、金融危机与政府规制

货币的虚拟化打开了经济虚拟化的大门,自由放任主义和政府失灵是经济虚拟化的重要推动力。经济全球化的本质是虚拟经济的全球化,美国的债务经济循环将全球经济紧紧地捆绑在一起,并为虚拟经济的发展不断注入流动性。金融危机产生的根源在于经济的过度虚拟化,导致整个金融系统的风险不断累积和放大,最终导致金融系统的崩溃。保持虚拟经济与实体经济的适当比例,加快金融体系的建设和完善,合理界定市场与政府的边界,是我们面临的重要任务。     

中国经济体制改革时期制度变迁的特征分析

从实质上说，中国经济体制改革的过程就是一个制度的重建过程，即以适应市场经济的制度安排取代适应计划经济的制度安排取代适应计划经济的制度安排的过程。在这一制度重建的进程中，市场取向的制度变迁表现出八个方面的典型特征：一是制度变迁需求的内性性；二是制度变迁供给的滞后性；三是制度变迁目标的动态性；四是制度变迁过程的渐进性；五是制度变迁轨迹的路径依赖性；六是从单项制度变迁向制度结构变迁演进；七是强制性制度变迁与诱致性制度变迁相结合；八是宏观经济制度变迁与微观经济制度变迁同步进行。     

产权管制放松与制度绩效变迁——来自广东经济非均衡转轨的证据

过去大量的研究强调政策、区域、禀赋等对广东经济转轨绩效的影响,论文从产权管制放松的角度出发,构建了一个简单的博弈论模型,旨在分析广东政府放松对资源配置权利的管制对经济转轨产生的制度效应。研究发现,广东各级地方政府放松对资源配置权利的管制,大幅节约了租金耗散,并衍生出更多给予经济个体发挥比较优势的获利空间,扩展了市场范围,从而促进了地区经济均衡转轨。论文对于理解广东经济转轨问题提供了一个新的视角和框架,它尤其有助于揭示产权管制放松与经济绩效变迁二者之间的内在机理和制度逻辑。     

Agriculture as Van and Rear in Institutional Change

The formation of interest groups is path-dependent. The ideology and thus behavior of interest groups cannot be isolated from history, customs, economic conditions and changing alternatives open to individuals. In Australia, there were historical and traditional divisions concerning farmers producing for international markets that depend on flexible world prices and those producing for the domestic market with stabilized and subsidized prices. The National Farmers Federation (NFF) (1979) is the result of a historical-evolutionary-developmental process of preceding agricultural interest groups. Hence, an understanding of the NFF ideology that promotes free competition and the elimination of agricultural subsidies worldwide, in contrast to the agricultural interest groups in the United States and UK, requires an examination, using an institutional and economic complexity approach, of the evolution of agricultural interest groups in Australia.     

创新、创造性破坏与内生经济变迁——熊彼特主义经济理论的发展

熊彼特曾试图建立一个以创新为动力的内生经济变迁理论。在沉寂多年以后,熊彼特的这一经济理论在20世纪90年代以后复活。演化新熊彼特主义借用生物学隐喻构建了企业的行为模式,使创新得以内生化,并类比生物学中的自然选择过程描述了经济动态过程。新古典熊彼特主义增长理论则将熊彼特"创造性破坏"思想模型化,通过引入研发生产函数和对创新组织的探讨将技术创新内生化,深入地研究了与经济增长相关的市场结构问题。三支理论在方法论和学术传统上的差别导致了它们对创新机制以及经济变迁的不同理解。文章系统地梳理了熊彼特主义经济理论的主要发展并对之进行了比较、评价和展望。