Contributions of the Galbraith “Technostructure” to the Growing Crisis of the U.S. Economy

This paper lays the methodological foundations of an analytical framework that may help shed some new light on the issue of territorial inequalities in the digital economy. It opposes the recent tendency to build up an evolutionary economic geography as an alternative not only to the so-called "New Economic Geography" (namely "geographical mainstream economics") but also to the institutional economic geography. The paper advocates the development of an evolutionary and institutional approach in economic geography, which would be meso-focused. Finally, it presents some insights that highlight the heuristic potential of this approach in reappraising the territorial features of the digital economy.     

Along the Borgesian Frontier: Excavating the Neighbourhood of “Wider Europe”

What would a non-Eurocentric European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) look like? Starting off with this perhaps “impossible” question, the first half of the article traces recent shifts in thinking about ENP on the part of EU administrators and intellectuals who argue for a strengthened and reinvigorated neighbourhood policy around the Southern Mediterranean, Middle East and CIS countries, through what has now been termed a differentiated “ENP plus”. Parsing recent EU reports, opinions and speeches, it isolates a crucial ambiguity within this re-framed policy landscape regarding ENP's relationship to the previous round of EU expansion, which has important political consequences for how ENP currently envisions the thorny problem of transition within the neighbourhood. The second half of the article draws on a parable by the Argentinean novelist-philosopher Jorge Luis Borges to frame more sharply the problem of cartographic representation embedded within ENP. Applying the neologism of a “Borgesian frontier” to the space of the European Neighbourhood, the paper concludes by suggesting some potential pathways for re-imagining this space in ways that work along with, rather than are “blind” to, contradictions inherent to Europe's newly minted external borderland. At stake, the article argues, is a politics that can properly re-envision regions of the world located at the limits of Europe's sovereign spatial imagination.     

“Probability of risk aversion” and other applications of derivatives of the certainty equivalent

“Probability of risk” aversion is principally concerned with reactions to scaling up of probabilities of non-zero values of a non-positive random variable by a common factor. Decreasing probability-of-risk aversion is defined and shown to be equivalent to ordinary risk aversion. Implications of this for insurance are pointed out. The sort of scaling involved is the same as that involved in “self-protection,” and it is shown that, for any expenditure on self-protection, say x, a concave utility function will prefer a coinsurance policy, costing x, which leaves probabilities unchanged, but scales down loss amounts by the same proportion as probabilities are scaled under self-protection. Properties of several comparative concepts of decreasing risk aversion are established. Derivatives of the certainty equivalent (CE) are used to elucidate well-known comparative static results in models of expected utility maximization. Finally, the study proves that concavity of the CE implies convexity of the coefficient of absolute risk aversion and examines the role of curvature of the CE in exploring relationships between properties of risk vulnerability, properness, and standardness.

Legal Remedies for Breach of the Regulatory “Contract”

We present a model of the regulatory contract that focuses on the mutual investment of buyer and seller and recognizes the cost of contractual renegotiation and the importance of breach remedies when contracts are incomplete. We model renegotiation as a litigation game played before a quasi-judicial administrative court. We find that the standard contractual remedy of expectations damages cannot implement first-best levels of investment for both buyer and seller. If the seller fully recovers its sunk investment upon buyer breach, however, then first-best levels of investment by both buyer and seller can be supported provided litigation costs are small enough.     

“The End of Autocracy”: Analysing Representations of the Austro-Hungarian Dissolution as the Foundation of US Hegemonic Discourse

This paper investigates the manner in which the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was represented to the US public using a qualitative content analysis of articles from three major US newspapers in October and November, 1918. Against a geopolitical backdrop of the increasing global presence of the United States and assertion of its influence in international affairs, the analysis shows that three key themes were emphasised in the popular US political narratives at the end of World War I: national self-determination, legitimacy of governance, and the role of Eastern European diasporas and representatives in the United States. Throughout the essay, these themes are connected to key discussions of US hegemony in political geography. The critical geopolitics approach highlights how the articles signposted boundary markers of identity at a crucial, transitional point in US history, helping to crystallise an American sense of ‘Self’ increasingly based upon world leadership, and sending compelling messages about the expected behaviours of nations, states, and individuals. This work concludes that the stage was set early in the twentieth century for a phase of US global intellectual and moral leadership, and that the ascendance of US hegemony globally was accompanied by an active media project at home which sought to redefine Americans' collective sense of themselves as vanguards of liberal democratic values in a world of outdated and undemocratic regimes.     

A Political Economy Application of the “Tragedy of the Anticommons”: The Greek Government Debt Crisis

The tragedy of the anticommons unfolds when separate social agents—be they private owners of a property who intend to use the property for their own economic benefit or political actors who pursue their political objectives—do not hold effective rights to use their economic or political power for their own purposes without consent of the other players of the economic or political game. I shall discuss the Greek government debt crisis and the Eurozone countries’ policies toward Greece within the analytical framework of the tragedy of the anticommons in this paper. I do not intend to dig deep into the structure and long-term trends of public and private finances in Greece. I shall only show that the successive bail-out programs of the Eurozone countries were doomed to fail because of these countries’ competitive and non-cooperative approach to the Greek financial problems. I shall also show that a coordinating agency, say the IMF, can foster the coordinated outcome only under strict informational conditions.     

Validity of the “Principle of Maximum Product Differentiation” in a unionized mixed-duopoly

Developing a location-price spatial model in a unionized mixed-duopoly, we find that the welfare-maximizing nature of the public firm implies a lower degree of product differentiation such that, in contrast to the private duopoly, the “Principle of Maximum Product Differentiation” is not reproduced. Considering two different wage-regimes for the public firm, this paper examines the effects of wage regulation imposed on civil servants. It is shown that, when a public firm’s union is prohibited from collective bargaining, the firm is more competitive, and the degree of differentiation is less. Moreover, regulation always reduces both the private firm’s profit and the level of social welfare.     

Gini's “Transvariazione” and the measurement of distance between distributions

This paper notes that Gini's concept of Transvariazione corresponds to the idea of overlapping of distributions. It shows that this concept is implicit in some measures of income inequality such as the Pietra and Gini Index and is at the basis of various measures of distance between distributions. An empirical illustration is provided, based on Israeli data for the period 1978–1994.     

On the Impact of “Callback” Competition on International Telephony

In this paper we build a simple three-country model to evaluate the impact of callback on international telephony. The effects on both accounting rates and collection prices are studied. Callback firms exploit arbitrage opportunities in collection prices among countries, rerouting calls that originate in countries with high prices for international phone calls via countries with low prices. Contrary to what is commonly perceived, we show that callback tends to magnify the distortions associated with the current accounting rate regime. In particular, callback puts upward pressure on low price countries accounting rates and on collection charges. Callback companies are assumed to enjoy a volume price discount on each rerouted call; we show that the larger the price discount offered to callback companies, the higher the prices for international calls in the country hosting callback.     

“Cleansing the air at the expense of waterways?” Empirical evidence from the toxic releases of coal-fired power plants in the United States

Environmental policies in the United States have primarily taken the form of media-specific regulations that emphasize end-of-pipe pollution control. This can lead to the shifting of pollution across environmental media, thereby having the potential to solve one environmental problem by creating a new problem. This study uses data from 228 coal-fired power plants that report to the Toxics Release Inventory to conduct an empirical examination of the extent to which media-specific regulation has caused power plants to shift their toxic air releases to waterways, land, or transfers for offsite recycling facilities. Controlling for plant-level fixed effects, scale of production, and environmental inspections and enforcement under air regulation, this study finds that adopting tougher air pollution regulation that designates counties as being in nonattainment status with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards significantly increased toxic releases to waterways and land.     

“Remembrance of things past”: Gordon Tullock,the man and the bioeconomist

My tribute paper on Gordon Tullock (1922–2014) provides some memorable stories of Tullock as a person and as a founder of bioeconomics. I include my speech, “Toast and roast: Gordon Tullock,” delivered on the occasion of Tullock’s 80th birthday; also the same “Toast and roast....,” written in the form of a poem, “Ode to Gordon Tullock.” I also discuss Tullock’s contributions to bioeconomics. In a concluding section, I recall a couple of my poignant memories of Gordon Tullock.     

Analysis of the Evaluation Mechanism of the Stride Development System of the Enterprise

on the basis of the self-organizing theories the thesis analyzes how enterprises realize the stride development through the technology stride. At First the thesis sets up the stride development system of enterprises and then the thesis reveals the mechanism that the technology stride will give rise to the stride development of ente~fises. In the end the thesis puts forward the enlightenment for the stride development of enterprises from the stride development system of enterprises.     

The Question of “Equilibrium” in Human Action and the Everyday Paradox of Rationality

This paper first specifies how Schütz's analysis of deliberation determines the limits of rationality where individual human action is concerned. This analysis establishes that there is no equilibrium of alternative possibilities before or after deliberation. Next the paper specifies how Schütz's analysis of the typification that makes successful intersubjective action possible leads to the paradox of rationality on the common sense level. Finally, the paper explains how Schütz's analysis of relevance can provide an account for this paradox, and thereby point to an order of human interaction in the absence of equilibrium, all without violating the postulate of subjective interpretation.     

Socioeconomics and the new “battle of the methods”: Towards a paradigm shift?

During the last ten or fifteen years the old separation between economics and other social sciences has increasingly been challenged by economists applying the neoclassical paradigm to problems that traditionally concern the other social sciences. The main thesis of this paper is that this so-called “economic imperialism” threatens to unleash a new paradigmatic struggle in the social sciences, which is likely to be just as destructive as the old Methodenstreit. It is in this situation that socioeconomics emerges as a viable alternative since it emphasizes the need for a systhesis of the findings of several social sciences when an economic problem is analyzed. The article stresses the original battle of the methods at the turn of the century that gave birth to a set of ideas, analogous to those of Etzioni on socioeconomics, namely what Max Weber called Sozialökonomik. The emergence of “economic imperialism” is described, and the essay ends with a plea for a socioeconomics in the sense of a broad, overarching approach to economic analysis. Economic imperialism, it is concluded, threatens to close the door to new developments in economics; socioeconomics, on the other hand, tries to keep it open.     

Is the economics of time and ignorance a “classic”?

A history of economic thought perspective on The Economics of Time and Ignorance reveals that the book rehabilitates some major themes in the Austrian tradition that were all but lost subsequent to the formalist revolution in economics that took place in the middle of the twentieth-century. The book also anticipates some important ideas that were extended and applied in Austrian economics after it was first published. Reviews have claimed that the book was a “classic” and also “original”. The book is too close in a temporal sense to judge whether or not future generations will canonize it as a “classic”. Using Stigler’s criteria as to what constitutes scientific “originality”, it is concluded that, taken as a whole, the book was not original. From the vantage point of the overall discipline of economics, it was a work advancing controversial ideas that would not easily change the beliefs, practices and interests of economists in general but it offered sound reasons for taking the Austrian thought-trajectory more seriously. It would be more fitting to view the authors as providers of many innovations contributing to the mature Austrian economics of the twenty-first century.     

Full price competition and Dupuit's defense of the long-and-short-haul “discrimination”

Condemnation of the long-and-short-haul discrimination has been nearly ubiquitous in the literature on economic theory and transportation. However, the French economist Dupuit developed a case against all transport regulation by relating it to a defense of the practice of place discrimination before the middle of the nineteenth century. He did so, moreover, within an early elaboration of a full price explanation of competitive functioning. This paper analyzes the idea in Dupuit's context and argues that this so-called form of price discrimination is actually an efficient and necessary form of the competitive process.     

The impact of personal beliefs on climate change: the “battle of perspectives” revisited

The paper proposes a multi-agent climate-economic model, the “battle of perspectives 2.0”. It is an updated and improved version of the original “battle of perspectives” model, described in Janssen (1996) and Janssen/de Vries (1998). The model integrates agents with differing beliefs about economic growth and the sensitivity of the climate system and places them in environments corresponding or non-corresponding to their beliefs. In a second step, different agent types are ruling the world conjointly. Using a learning procedure based on some operators known from Genetic Algorithms, the model shows how they adapt wrong beliefs over time. It is thus an evolutionary model of climate protection decisions. The paper argues that such models may help in analyzing why cost-minimizing protection paths, derived from integrated assessment models à la Nordhaus/Sztorc (2013), are not followed. Although this view is supported by numerous authors, few such models exist. With the “battle of perspectives 2.0” the paper offers a contribution to their development. Compared to the former version, more agent types are considered and more aspects have been endogenized.     

Regional Development of Manufacturing Industry in the Eastern and Midwestern Regions of China——Based on the Theory of “Home Market Effects”

“新经济地理理论”强调规模经济是地区贸易和国际贸易的驱动力,这种力量被克鲁格曼称为“本地市场效应”(Home Market Effects).本地市场效应理论不仅具有重要的理论意义,而且具有现实的经济意义.借助时间序列分析方法,笔者重点实证检验了中国东、中西部地区相关制造业的本地市场效应.检验结果表明:多数制造业部门在中国东、中西部区域经济发展中,本地需求规模起到了主要作用,企业劳动生产率和固定成本对本地市场效应的向心力和离心力作用.因此,在追求未来区域经济和谐发展的过程中,注重培育相关产业的本地市场效应十分重要.     

“Generalized Darwinism” and the quest for an evolutionary theory of policy-making

According to the “Generalized Darwinism” movement (GD), the three principles of variation, selection and retention/replication (labeled “Darwinian” in some variants of GD) can and should be used as a meta-theoretical framework for the explanation of evolutionary processes in the sociocultural domain. Despite their biological origins, the various variants of GD aim at redefining these principles in a way that is supposed to abstract from any domain-specific particulars. We argue that in order to qualify as an adequate meta-theoretical framework for evolutionary economics, GD should not only inspire and guide positive theory development in evolutionary economics, but also be able to support viable practical policy implications. Examining its potential to do so, however, leads us to the conclusion that in its specific deductive variant proposed by Hodgson & Knudsen (HKGD), it risks systematically misguiding evolutionary policy advice. Competing variants, such as the one proposed by Pelikan, fare better in this regard.