NEOCLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY: AN APPLICATION TO TRADE POLICIES

Abstract. This paper starts with a review of the literature on 'neoclassical'political economy and then goes on to apply this perspective to the issue of trade liberalization. In this connection, the paper critically discusses various political economy models which have been advanced to explain patterns of trade policies in both developed and developing countries and assesses them in light of recent empirical evidence. The paper also makes a brief review of the empirical planning studies which estimate the gains from trade liberalization.     

Robust political economy correlates of major product and labor market reforms in advanced economies: Evidence from BAMLE for logit models

The political economy literature has put forward a multitude of hypotheses regarding the drivers of structural reforms, but few, if any, empirically robust findings have emerged thus far. To make progress, we draw a parallel with model uncertainty in the growth literature and provide a new version of the Bayesian averaging of maximum likelihood estimates (BAMLE) technique tailored to binary logit models. Relying on a new database of major past labor and product market reforms in advanced countries, we test a large set of variables for robust correlation with reform in each area. We find widespread support for the crisis‐induces‐reform hypothesis, as high unemployment and economic crises are robustly correlated to structural reforms. We also find evidence of reform convergence—that is, countries with tighter regulation are more prone to liberalize. Reforms are more likely when other countries also undertake them and when there is formal pressure to implement them. Other robust correlates are more specific to certain areas—for example, international pressure and political factors are most relevant for product market and job protection reforms, respectively.     

The political economy of growth in Morocco

This paper is an attempt to explain the relatively low performance of the Moroccan economy during the last four decades using a political economy approach. In that period, the Moroccan society benefited from sophisticated institutions that facilitated policy coordination and commitment. But, the existing institutions hampered the participation of large segments of the population and political parties representing them in the policymaking process. Also, the centralization of administration hindered local initiatives. However, numerous and significant structural reforms have been undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s and in recent years a strategy has been adopted that combines continued economic liberalization, increased democratization, and efforts to reduce poverty and promote human development. These changes have started to bear fruit in the past few years.     

Longitudinal analysis of self-employment follow-through

The Hungarian economy was based on central planning for several decades and in comparison with the dominance of the great organizations that consisted of many smaller units, the role of small-sized enterprises was marginal. The change in the political climate involved recognition of and belief in entrepreneurship and the new legal system increased the opportunity for setting up new enterprises established on private and joint capital. Nevertheless, the changes in the organizational system of companies within the national economy appear to concentrate in time and territory in Northern Hungary. Increasing unemployment inspires the start of numerous enterprises even when the experience of entrepreneurship is missing and, in addition, the inclination towards it. This may result in difficulties and danger and a study of North Hungarian small businesses is therefore useful.

The aim of this research is to examine the position of SMEs in the North Hungarian industrial area, concentrating on questions that can not be answered by means of traditional statistics. Data were collected by surveying questionnaires. The questions referred to the development of SMEs in North Hungary.

Finally, the elements in the economic environment that may hinder or help successful operation of the enterprises were analysed. With the experience gained by our investigation we would like to help in the reinforcement of SMEs working in Northern Hungary.     

Liberal Reformism and Declining Capital Formation in Hungary: The Developing Capitalist Sector Is Its Only Frontier But This Threatens the Party Dictatorship

Abstract . Of countries noted for having an Eastern type of economic system, Hungary is commonly touted for the successful, market-type reforms applied to the management of its economy. The commonly held notion that these reforms have been successful is challenged. It is argued that the reforms have never been implemented as was intended, and this has consequently resulted in macro and microeconomic planning policy to be administered in a varying fashion; also that the new direction in planning policy is seeking to implement fundamental changes regarding the formation and growth of private eriteprise a response to the problems facing Hungary's State-owned sector. This development is noted to be causing profound changes in Hungary's economy, while also having a disequilibrating effect on the composition of classes in Hungarian society.     

Ragnar Frisch: Econometrics and the Political Economy of Planning

A bstract . Ragnar Frisch's main contributions are in the field of econometrics. This paper discusses Frisch's contribution to the political economy of planning. It argues that although planning was not a special feature of classical political economy , Frisch nonetheless shared in the broader social and moral aspirations of political economy; for Frisch, these were the ultimate objectives of planning. To this end the paper discusses Frisch's approach to the formalization of society's preferences. This approach involves an interactive mechanism in which politicians and technical experts participate. Against the political economy aspirations of Frisch, some behavioral shortcomings of his framework are briefly discussed.     

金融发展能缩小中小企业融资中的政治差异吗?——基于正式与非正式制度的替代效应分析

转轨经济时期,金融发展和政治关系在中小企业融资中发挥什么样的作用?金融发展是否能够缩小中小企业融资中的政治差异?这是一个极其重要的问题。利用全国民营企业的抽样问卷调查数据,从金融发展和政治关系在缓解中小企业融资约束上的替代效应角度对此进行分析。我们发现:具有政治背景的企业在外源融资上具有优势,中小企业融资中存在政治差异现象。金融发展能够帮助中小企业获得正规金融贷款,缓解他们的融资困境,并对政治关系产生显著的替代效应,它能缩小中小企业融资中的政治差异。     

Accounting Insights from the Healthcare Sector

Over the last decade, significant accounting reforms have been considered by a wide range of state and local governments throughout the world. Few countries have undertaken such extensive reform of their public sector, or of their public sector accounting practices as an integral part of those reforms, as New Zealand. While the central government accounting reforms are more well known, the reforms at local government have been equally dramatic, the most recent being the introduction in 1998 of a long-term financial planning regime under the Local Government Amendment (No. 3) Act 1996. This paper examines the factors leading up to the legislation, describes the requirements of the new regime, identifies the accounting and related issues which have arisen and concludes with some lessons which other countries may wish to consider in their own quest for transparency and accountability.     

Neoliberal Urban Planning Through Social Government: Notes on the Demographic Re-engineering of Malmö

Neoliberal urban governance is often framed as a break with the social statecraft of the postwar period. If we approach social government as a specific mode of biopolitical population politics, neoliberal reforms can instead be understood as re-articulating the welfarist version of postwar social planning. In this article, I analyze how social urban government can become the basis of neoliberal planning through a study of the Swedish city of Malmö, which has shifted its approach from emblematic Scandinavian social democratic welfare urbanism to a particular kind of neoliberal planning. Malmö is a city where distinctions between desirable and unwanted populations are produced by municipal social planning that concerns itself with accumulating human resources. Postwar social planning technologies are thus re-articulated as the basis for making space competitive for certain residents. This mode of planning is described as a type of ‘social neoliberalism’, which, instead of circumscribing neoliberal economics, extends the reach of neoliberalism into social government. This study suggests that calls for a return to social planning need to be complicated by accounts of how social government itself has been remade by neoliberal reforms. It also points out how the divisions produced by social neoliberalism expose powerful fault lines that reveal a terrain of political struggle.     

REFORMING HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES IN POLAND - An overview

The transformations taking place in Poland aim, among others, at adapting the system to new conditions of a market economy. The irrationality of funding social services by the budget made it necessary to restrict the role played by the State in their funding. It means the need for changes concerning not only institutional reforms but also new sources of income. The goal of this paper is to present the main directions of reforms occurring in the Polish economy on the example of health care. The paper concentrates on the problems of implementation, the reform in health care, its reasons and consequences. The trends indicate that the process of reforms is going in the direction of developing new methods and forms of funding and reducing the share of budgetary funds in the funding of social services. The state responsible for the reforms makes an attempt to create appropriate legal and organizational conditions for the question of institutions providing social services.     

Reforming local public services

Abstract

The following article is aimed at analysing reforms in public service delivery and management at the local level of government in Germany and France from a cross-countries comparative perspective. Particular attention is paid to the results and effects these reform initiatives have caused with regard to the administrative organization, steering capacities, and output performance. Two major approaches of reform will be addressed: privatization, contracting-out, and ‘corporatization’ of local services on the one hand and public management reforms on the other. Proceeding from the distinct ‘starting conditions’ of reforms in the two local government systems, the question will be pursued, as to whether there has been an increasingly convergent or divergent development in French and German local service provision, and how these evolutions can be explained.     

Poland's Economic Reform: Myth or Reality?

Repeated attempts to salvage Poland's wrecked economy by introducing market-based reforms and more autonomy for enterprises have been constantly thwarted by the bureaucracy with a vested interest in the status quo. Party officials are unwilling to relinquish their control over supposedly autonomous managers. Poland seems doomed to continued poverty unless it rejects centralised control.     

Post-Thatcherite Urban Planning and Politics: a Major Change?

The political ideology driving urban statutory planning in the United Kingdom has held a central place within planning literature during the 1980s and 1990s. The distinctiveness of leadership style and political ideology associated with the Thatcher governments have been widely recognized both in practice and academia. However, the distinctiveness of political ideology to determine the form and status of statutory urban planning since John Major acceded to the prime ministership in 1990 has not been assessed so markedly. Questions emerge on whether Thatcherite ideology is continuing in the 1990s within the realm of planning and environment, of whether a watered down version of New Right policies are being implemented, or whether central government policies towards planning over the last six years marked a change in ideological direction. This paper examines statutory planning during the Major years with reference to the ideological components of Thatcherism. From this assessment, a comparative analysis is undertaken of both political administrations. The paper concludes by finding that although elements of Thatcherite ideology are continuing, there have been initiatives that move away from the primacy of the market. However, these do not form any ‘big theory’: the differences between Thatcher and Major are more related to style than substance. Thatcherism is continuing but in a neo-Thatcherite way.     

Labour contract regulations and workers' wellbeing: International longitudinal evidence

All industrialized countries have employment protection legislation (EPL) for permanent workers and restrictions on the use of temporary employment (RTE). The (ambiguous) effects of these on the levels of employment and unemployment have been extensively studied, but nothing is known empirically about their wellbeing implications. Using longitudinal data from the European Community Household Panel, the author conducts the first study of the link between both EPL and RTE and workers' wellbeing. The results provide evidence that both permanent and temporary employees gain from reforms that ease restrictions on temporary employment but leave firing costs for permanent workers unchanged. This finding contrasts with common claims found in the political economy literature.     

The Green Revolution,agrarian productivity and labor

The use of Green Revolution inputs has been responsible for higher levels of agrarian productivity in India. This is both because of the biological structure of high-yield varieties of seeds themselves and because of the structure of the agrarian political economy in the country. But the question is: have the laborers benefited from the rise in productivity made possible by the use of these inputs? I have shown, both conceptually and empirically, that laborers do gain from higher productivity, but not uniformly over space. They gain more where they are more organized. This means that the relation between productivity and wages is, in part, a political relation, and the strength of this relation is characterized by ‘spatial inconstancy’. I have also discussed how the Green Revolution has tended to undermine the relations of personal dependence between the landed and the laborers, and this seems to have helped labor organization to some extent. Labor organization is also affected by the structure of land/asset distribution. In particular, whether or not laborers possess some land/asset makes a difference to the effectiveness of laborers’ bargaining power with landowners over wages, and therefore, to the actual level of wages being paid.     

Privatizing the commons: reforming the ejido and urban development in Mexico

Few studies worldwide have analysed how to manage equitably the process whereby ‘customary’ or ‘common’ land can be incorporated into future urban development, particularly in so far as this might be achieved through privatization and deregulation. This paper focuses upon Mexico and the 1991–2 reforms of Article 27 which dramatically changed the tenure codes and political relations covering the widespread customary land sector — called ejidos. It is argued that, in effect, the reforms constitute deregulation of former tenure relations rather than outright privatization, and that rather than being radical in content, the reforms are subtle redefinitions of past practices in which the balance of administrative power over ejidal land has shifted significantly, away from the Agrarian Reform Ministry towards the Social Development Ministry and local (city) government. Deregulation appears to offer three principal scenarios for public and private sector ejido land development: Urban Development Companies, Joint Ventures and Extension to the ‘Urban Zone’, yet to date there is little evidence that any one has proven sufficiently attractive to be pursued intensively, and the paper suggests that illegal alienation of ejido land is likely to continue and may get worse. However, the latest Urban Development Program 1995–2000 identifies ejido land deregulation and urban development as one of its principal strategies, tied to President Zedillo’s New Federalism project, which seeks to strengthen municipal and state government capacity and effectiveness. This profound shift in the structure of political managerial authority and responsibility offers the increased likelihood that land regularization practices and urban planning of the now deregulated ejidos will become more significant in the future.     

The Shifting Welfare State in Hungary and Latvia

This article analyzes the evolution of the welfare system in Hungary and Latvia since the early 1990s. We identify the main components of social protection and investigate whether they have shifted. We find evidence of significant changes, but not of a definite and major shift. Rather, we argue that various benefits have evolved differently. In general, reforms tend to recombine (rather than replace) specific components.     

Political Leadership,Conflict and the Prospects for Constitutional Peace

The emphasis in constitutional political economy has been that new rules and institutions can be devised that improve the welfare of a society. Given the number of societies that are infected with political conflict and as a result lower levels of welfare, this paper attempts to analyse why we do not see more constitutional conventions aimed at eliminating conflict. The key idea is that expressively motivated group members may create incentives for instrumentally motivated group leaders such that it leads them to choose conflict rather than compromise. Nonetheless, it is not argued that such a peace is impossible to obtain. This leads to a further question, that if such a constitutional agreement could be found, would the expressive perspective alter the conventional instrumental perspective on the sort of constitutional reform that should be undertaken?     

Commodity market reform in Africa: some recent experience

Since the early 1980s, dramatic changes in export commodity markets, shocks associated with resulting price declines and changing views on the role of the state have ushered in widespread reforms to agricultural commodity markets in Africa. The reforms significantly reduced government participation in the marketing and pricing of commodities. This paper examines the background, causes, process and consequences of these reforms and derives lessons for successful reforms from experiences in markets for four commodities important to Africa—cocoa, coffee, cotton, and sugar. The commodity focus of the paper highlights the special features associated with these markets that affect the reform process. The paper complements the current literature on market reforms in Africa, where grain market studies are more common. We suggest that the types of market interventions prior to reform are more easily classified by crop than by country. Consequently, there are significant commodity-specific differences in the initial conditions and in the outcomes of reforms related to these markets. However, there are general lessons as well. We find that the key consequences of reform have been significant changes in or emergence of marketing institutions, and a significant shift of political and economic power from public to private sector. In cases where interventions were greatest and reforms most complete, producers have benefited from receiving a larger share of export prices. Additionally, we conclude that the adjustment costs of reform can be reduced in most cases by better understanding the detailed and idiosyncratic relationships between the commodity subsector, private markets, and public services. Finally, while there are significant costs to market-dependent reforms, experiences suggest that they are a necessary step toward a dynamic commodity sector based on private initiative. Indeed, this is particularly true in countries and sectors where interventions were greatest and market-supporting institutions the weakest.