Contemporary Economic thought. The Contribution of Neo-Institutional Economics

This article examines the historical developments of the institutionalist theory of the business enterprise since the early 1900s in order to demonstrate its distinctive characteristics that are often overlooked or belittled by some institutional-evolutionary economists and most mainstream economists. I argue that the institutionalist theory is an evolving and emergent theory, which bears a reciprocal, evolutionary, and cumulative relationship between the business enterprise and society. The institutionalist theory is, therefore, suitable for the understanding of the real-world business enterprise as it can be modified and refined along with the evolution of capitalism. The article begins with a discussion of the present state of the institutionalist theory. The following section is devoted to the major contributions to the institutionalist theory situated in the evolution of U.S. capitalism. The penultimate section provides a critical discussion of new institutional and evolutionary approaches to the firm. The article concludes with a brief discussion as to what should be done for the further development of the institutionalist theory of the business enterprise.     

当代资本主义的新变化与资本主义生产方式的部分质变——兼与徐崇温先生商榷

当代资本主义的新变化既不是资本主义本质的根本改变，也不只是资本主义统治与剥削的手段、形式和斗争策略的改变，而是资本主义社会经济结构的部分质变。当代资本主义生产方式的积极扬弃，已经跨越了资本主义生产方式的临界点，超越了资本主义生产方式的界限，包含某些社会主义因素，逐渐向社会主义和平发展。因此，绝对不能抱着教条主义的态度，简单地用机械的、绝对的和主观的方法，而应当用辨证方法和历史唯物主义的科学方法来认识当代资本主义的新变化，根据新的历史条件来创造性地发展马克思主义理论，实现马克思主义理论的与时俱进和创新发展。     

大数据与监视型资本主义

本文首先介绍了监视型资本主义的概念,描述信息时代的资本是如何通过收集个人数据,无视私隐,筛选用户,在不受法律监控的情况下进行帝国式扩展的。进而,本文提出数据的附身性和数码资本错位这两个特征,用以分析技术如何在数据收集和应用上激活数据的私人财产属性,以及资本如何利用价值错位和技术优势去诱使用户参与这一资本增值的进程。数据的附身性揭示了个体如何被卷入大数据时代的生产关系,数码资本错位揭示了资本具体实现监视型资本主义的技术。这两个概念将完善监视型资本主义这一理论体系,进一步展现这个时代隐蔽的不平等状况。     

Beyond Materialism: A Coevolutionary Reinterpretation of the Environmental Crisis

Materialism, both as a vision of the good life and as a cosmological basis underlying epistemology and modern science, drives humanity's environmental crisis. The dominant thrust of the environmental movement has been simply to shift to a longer slower materialism. Understanding how materialism creates our environmental problems and limits our vision of the good life is a necessary step toward creating a different future. Understanding development as a process of coevolution between knowledge, technology, social organization, values, and nature provides an alternative cosmological and epistemological framing which both gives us perspective on materialism and suggests an alternative vision for the future.     

Inequality and the Phases of Capitalism

We live in a capitalist world characterized by economic inequality. Inequality is a real curse, but it does not have to always increase. In different phases of capitalism, it may be increasing, constant, or decreasing, depending on the dominant type of technical progress (capital-using, capital-neutral, or capital-saving), on the organizational capacity of the workers, on the competition from other countries with lower wages, and on the prevailing degree of democracy. But distribution faces an economic constraint: the expected profit rate must remain attractive to business entrepreneurs. From the mid-twentieth century, we would expect technological progress to change from neutral to capital-saving, which would allow wages to increase at a faster rate than productivity. Indeed, this happened in the Golden Years of capitalism, but such progress stalled in the succeeding neoliberal years, dominated as they were by a class coalition of rentier capitalists and financiers.     

中国多种经济成份并存中的国家资本主义

本对中国目前各种经济成份中的国家资本主义进行了全方位、多视角的分析与探讨。     

人口变迁与资本主义发展动力

马克斯.韦伯在《新教伦理与资本主义精神》一书中认为,新教精神对于资本主义发展有"不可替代"的作用,西方文明高于其他国家的传统文化。然而1500年以后世界人口的激速膨胀,借着美洲大陆的发现向外殖民扩张导致了一种完全不同于以往的社会经济形态出现。韦伯的观点受到质疑。该文深入挖掘历史现象揭示了被韦伯忽略的一些史实,新教伦理对资本主义发展不是"不可替代"的:人口变迁是资本主义发展、扩张的主要动力。     

西方金融资本主义下的寄生阶级、债务通缩与大萧条——兼评迈克尔·赫德森的金融资本主义批判理论

金融资本生成于产业资本、商业资本和银行资本的垄断融合。在支配生产、流通和信用的基础上,金融资本通过定价权、金融投机、地租寻租、支配国债、滥用货币发行权等途径而建立一套寄生性的积累机制。随着金融资本对生产关系的全面支配,金融资本的寄生性积累也越来越系统化、自主化,造成的社会危机也越来越不容易从外部加以克服,但同时,金融资本内部自我否定的逻辑却表现得越来越强烈。金融资本的寄生性积累导致债务膨胀和产业萎缩相互加强的危机,即债务通缩危机。新自由主义量化宽松的反通缩政策,在一定程度上避免了旧版大萧条,却导致了更难以解决的新版大萧条。美国学者赫德森把对金融资本寄生性积累的批判纳入到从古典政治经学到马克思主义政治经济学的传统中,从金融资本的寄生性积累探讨西方经济、政治危机的根源,虽然其金融资本批判理论还因缺乏辩证逻辑而有一定的缺点,但是该理论基本的理论方向是值得肯定的。     

生产劳动和非生产劳动与当代资本主义

区分生产劳动与非生产劳动,对于正确分析价值自我扩张、资本积累、资本主义经济中的各种变量、政府对收入分配的干预以及资本主义经济发展的新趋势,都具有重要意义。马克思主义政治经济学强调要区分一般生产劳动和资本生产劳动。只有在生产中所从事的劳动才是一般生产劳动;资本生产劳动是生产剩余价值的劳动。剩余价值生产标准是资本主义条件下生产劳动的绝对标准。     

Evolution of U.S. Household Agency Over Stages of Capitalism

We suggest ways to explore household agency over stages of capitalism as delineated by Hyman Minsky. We make a distinction between households as institutions and going concerns. Furthermore, we delineate two levels of household agency: (i) household going concerns operating through the institution of the household, and (ii) household going concerns operating through other institutions, such as the state and the business enterprise. Those layers of household agency are especially salient in money manager capitalism, where there is an illusionary agency for most households, and where actual agency increases mostly for those households that are able to operate as agents outside of the household institution.     

演化经济学的方法和主题特征及其演变——一种以"另类教规理论"为例的解释

以赖纳特和张夏准等人为代表的另类教规理论是演化经济学的新兴流派之一,文章在对演化经济学的历史比较与回溯、异质性与分类、时空特定性、能动性与结构等方法与主题特征进行阐述的同时,以另类教规理论为样本,对其主要观点、政策主张和分析方法进行剖析,以探讨演化经济学的发展。     

Corporate Islam,Global Capitalism and the Performance of Economic Moralities

Recent years have witnessed the rapid expansion of the Islamic economy, which by some estimates has reached a size of US$4 trillion. The growth of the Islamic economy presents an intriguing test case for the compatibility of global capitalism and moral – in this case specifically Islamic – principles. This article adopts a performative lens to draw attention to the role of the World Islamic Economic Forum and the Global Islamic Economy Summit as legitimation mechanisms celebrating economic diversity and the success of Muslim- entrepreneurs with the aim of increasing the visibility of the Islamic economy. Here, a polyphony of Muslim voices is sought to be consolidated into the voice of ‘business Islam’, with important implications for how the Islamic economy is conceived, defined and delineated.     

Evolution-Based Approaches in Economics and Evolutionary Loss of Information

Evolutionary economics provides a self-organizing, stabilizing mechanism without relying on mechanic equilibria. However, there are substantial differences between the genetic evolutionary biology and the evolution of institutions, firms, routines, or strategies in economics. Most importantly, there is no genetic codification and no sexual reproduction in economic evolution, and the involved agents can interfere consciously and purposefully. This entails a general lack of fixation and a quick loss of information through a Muller’s ratchet-like mechanism. The present contribution discusses the analogy of evolution in biology and economics, and considers potential problems resulting in evolutionary models in economics.     

The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Darwin uses natural selection in two different senses. Struggle for existence refers to rivalry; survival of the fittest refers to surviving environmental changes. The mainstream vision of economic harmony requires casting natural selection as survival of the fittest. There is no struggle, no conflict. Mainstream economics depicts the selector in the evolutionary game as the firm itself. The mainstream vision requires banishing corporate power and the technological basis of power. For Veblen, corporate power is central. The existence of power implies that among firms, selection assumes the form of struggle. Evolutionary game theory breaks with the mainstream vision; firms are rivals. Evolutionary game theory, however, lacks the "stories" that provide a mapping between theory and reality, something institutionalists are well-positioned to provide. Stories are necessary for understanding corporate power, its origins, its use, and its limitations.     

Defying Convergence: Globalisation and Varieties of Defence-Industrial Capitalism

Globalisation is transforming the production of armaments in ways poorly understood, yet critical to states' security. Most analysts contend that this process forces states to converge upon laissez-faire policies that systematically disadvantage smaller states. However, broader research in comparative political economy suggests that domestic institutions drive states to adapt in distinct ways independently of their size. Indeed, the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach argues that national institutions shape both how states develop adjustment strategies and their firms' comparative advantages. This article examines two small states – Israel and Sweden – to ascertain whether defence-industrial transformation drives them to converge upon common laissez-faire policies or, contrarily, whether distinct VoC shaped their adaptation strategies along different lines. To preview the conclusions, institutions impel states to respond to defence-industrial transformation in divergent ways. Liberal market states, such as Israel, respond by introducing greater competition for contracts and liberalising their import/export policies. In coordinated market states, such as Sweden, government cooperates with business groups to selectively open industries to foreign capital and position them to compete globally. Although they adapt differently to transformation's common challenge, these cases demonstrate that even small states can retain robust defence-industrial bases, albeit ones with increasingly distinct comparative advantages and disadvantages.     

The Rate of Change in Evolutionary Systems and Evolutionary Economic Modeling

Evolutionary economics seeks to model socio-economic reality as an evolutionary system. This powerful approach entails the implication of the continuous loss of information through the evolutionary process. The implication corresponds to evolutionary biology, although the systems in evolutionary economics are different from those in evolutionary biology. The issue of the loss of information has not been extensively studied in economics. Many open questions remain: Which knowledge is lost under what circumstances? Can loss of information be harmful to the socio-economic system as a whole in the presence of runaway dynamics caused by, for example, network externalities? How can the development of knowledge in economic systems be studied? The present article examines these questions and more.     

The Political Economy of Brexit and the Future of British Capitalism First Symposium

The political economy of Brexit generates new challenges for the UK’s national business model and for European capitalism more broadly. Two symposia examine the implications of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in key economic policy areas. These symposia contribute to two main bodies of academic literature: the political economy literature on varieties of capitalism, with a specific focus on the UK, and the political economy literature on key economic policy areas of the EU. This short introduction to the first symposium first outlines the key features of the British variety of capitalism and highlight the main questions raised by Brexit in that respect. It then summarises the main findings of the papers of the first symposium and tease out some common themes.     

Toward a 0th Law of Thermodynamics: Order-Creation Complexity Dynamics from Physics and Biology to Bioeconomics

The evolutionary economics part of bioeconomics has its origins in attempts to justify why only rational firms survive, or to introduce dynamics into economic orthodoxy. To the extent that these views persist, this aspect of bioeconomics appears outdated. A more recent view is that the most significant dynamics in bio- and econospheres are not variances around equilibria. Instead order is now seen to be due to the interactions of autonomous, heterogeneous agents energized by contextually imposed tensions induced by energy differentials. While Darwinian selection is still an important process at the tail end of the order-creation process, other natural forces surrounding the biosphere are seen as causing the more significant changes in biological entities over the millennia. This view is set forth within the framework of thermodynamics. It also calls for a change away from the definition of science rooted in the equilibrium mathematics of Newton's orbital mechanics. This new message from natural science is about rapid-fire dynamics calling for a fast-motion science of order-creation before the equilibria of the 1^st Law of Thermodynamics take hold. The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics is seen to dominate the 1^st Law as the root cause of change. The possibility of a 0^th law – of agents' self-organization toward order creation – is considered. Key works by Prigogine, Ashby, Lorenz, Haken, Kelso et al., Salthe, Gell-Mann, Mainzer, Omnès, and Kauffman are reviewed. Nine premises – tracing the path toward an emerging 0^th law – are discussed, with some variance also evident. The view of Kelso et al. most easily leads to a one-sentence statement of a possible 0^th law of order creation that could offer something of value to bioeconomists.     

习俗元制度的演化机制:一个演化经济学的视角

演化经济学为我们分析制度演化提供了新的视角,演化经济学关于制度的演化机制主要有遗传机制(复制机制)、变异机制(新奇创生机制)、选择机制和适应性学习机制等.习俗就是最基本的元制度之一,作为一种基本的元制度,是市场经济运行的基础,从演化经济学的视角来看,习俗元制度的演化机制至少有:遗传机制(复制机制)、变异机制(新奇创生机制)、选择机制和适用性学习机制.     

The Nature of the State and the State of Nature: a Comment on Grady & McGuire's Paper

In 'The Nature of Constitutions', Mark Grady & Michael McGuire provide a model of the evolution and purposes of constitutions as arising to minimize appropriation by dominants of subordinates. This Comment builds on Grady & McGuire's article in three ways. First, it supplements their analysis by operationalizing a model of constitutional evolution that views constitutions as arising out of the conflict of competing high-ranking individuals to preserve their own authority. From this clash of self-interest of dominant individuals, constitutions are born. This predicts that constitutions will not simply tame all forms of appropriation, but will also hard-wire some forms of appropriation behavior into the permanent constitutional structure. Second, it examines the American constitution in light of this model to show how that constitution reflects the mixture of appropriation and appropriation-taming behavior. Third, this Comment argues that the breakdown of constitutionalism in the United States this century can be explained by a failure to fully appreciate the purposes of constitutionalism in a biological framework.