Bolivia’s Institutional Transformation: Contact Zones,Social Movements,and the Emergence of an Ethnic Class Consciousness

Over the past two decades, development economics has experienced a shift in focus from standard neoclassical analysis to institutions. While studying economic institutions is indeed important, evaluating their transformation and embeddedness is equally crucial for understanding and improving human wellbeing, especially in countries where market institutions are not fully developed. With that perspective in mind, we consider the importance of culture in the evolution of institutions in Bolivia by combining the concept of contact zones with old institutional economics (OIE). Contact zones refer to daily interactions in social spaces where culture and class meet and negotiate with each other. The contact zone between Bolivians and post-WWII development policies surfaced as an Andean collective memory, allowing for a possibility of social and political autonomy through the creation of an alternative to development, El Buen Vivir.     

Reviewing a Review

The concept of resistance to change made its appearance in the literature more than six decades ago. The paper analyses how the concept was introduced in the 1950s and how it was integrated in economic analysis by Kenneth E. Boulding. Secondly, we discuss the recent literature on the topic in order to identify the multifaceted meanings that the concept has taken on in three main areas of research: problem solving, organizational studies and institutional economics. Finally, we turn to methodological issues; the historical nature of change will be considered in order to clarify the relationship between resistance to change and path dependence.     

Measuring and forecasting regional environmental and economic efficiency in Italy

Environmental and economic efficiency has being receiving growing attention among researchers. In general terms, this concept is related to the capability of the economic systems to employ natural resources efficiently, so as to increase economic and human wealth. This clearly implies that both the economic and ecological aspects of decisions ought to be considered. Bearing this in mind, this article considers economic and ecological performance together, by applying data envelopment analysis and the Malmquist productivity index to investigate the efficiency of the 20 Italian regions from 2004 to 2011. The results reveal that the northern regions have been more efficient than the southern ones, highlighting the strong geographical differences between the two. Furthermore, this article uses the grey system theory to forecast regional, economic and environmental efficiency. The results of the forecasting analysis show that the north–south duality remains strong and will possibly increase since the regions in the south get worse in term of environmental and economic efficiency.     

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。     

The ‘trendiness’ of sleep: an empirical investigation into the cyclical nature of sleep time

Using Canadian time use data, we exploit variation in local unemployment rates to investigate the cyclical nature of sleep time and show that for both men and women, sleep time decreases when the economy is doing relatively better. Our results suggest that in a recession Canadians sleep an average of 3 h more per week, or 26?min more per day. Given the importance of even small changes in sleep time on measures of cognitive functioning such as reaction time and concentration, our findings may help explain the countercyclical nature of mortality. Further, as we find that sleep is affected by the same economic variables (notably the unemployment rate) that affect market work time, our results also contribute to the limited literature that shows that sleep time should not be treated as exogenously determined, but, like any other resource, determined by its relative cost.     

Charles Sanders Peirce and the Social Ontology of the Firm: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Agency

The ontological framework developed in the article aims to contribute to the social ontology of the firm by achieving three objectives: (i) to provide a well-developed conception of the human mind and conscience, (ii) to define the role of human agency in an evolutionary context and (iii) to highlight the importance of semiosis for the emergence of social structures with an emphasis on the concept of the firm as a social entity. Peirce’s semiotic conception of mind and consciousness provides insights for combining human signifying practices and social emergent properties. Thereupon, the semiotic attributions of the human mind may be understood as a basis for the ontological perspective of the firm.     

Relative and absolute scarcity of nature. Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation

Our aim in this essay is to identify and analyze some of the difficulties with interdisciplinary integration of economic and ecological contributions to the study of biodiversity loss. We develop our analysis from a widely accepted definition of economics which is based on the concept of scarcity. Taking a closer look at this notion, we find that economics actually limits itself to a very particular aspect of scarcity, which we denote as relative scarcity. We describe in what respect the economic approach towards biodiversity is based on this notion, and also reflect on the specific understanding of the relation of humans and nature behind the economic approach. We then turn to absolute scarcity as another notion of scarcity, and show that this is not within the scope of economics, but has been a theme of ecology and ecological economics. We describe in which way ecological and ecological–economic approaches towards biodiversity are based on the idea of absolute scarcity, and also reflect on the specific understanding of the human–nature relationship behind this notion of scarcity. Against this background, we discuss the roles of economics and ecology for nature conservation. We conclude that the interdisciplinary integration of ecology and economics requires a philosophical underpinning, and suggest a framework for further research.     

马克思恩格斯劳动概念的生态维度解读

马克思恩格斯在批判和反思近代工业文明社会异化劳动和吸收生态学思想的基础上形成了具有生态意蕴的劳动概念。在劳动概念中,马克思恩格斯提出了劳动的生态要素是主体自然与客体自然的有机统一,确立了劳动的生态尺度是人的尺度与自然界尺度的和谐统一,规定了劳动的生态本质是人与自然之间双向度的物质变换过程,这种物质变换是自然界内部自然循环的一环,人类必须将生产行为控制和调整在生态承载力限度之内,以消耗最少的资源获取物质变换的合理性与协调性。用马克思恩格斯的生态劳动概念指导生态文明建设,人类必须兼顾经济规律与生态规律,实现劳动目的由一维价值取向向多维价值取向转变,科学分析劳动的近期和远期效果。     

Economic growth,business cycles and products variety: exploring the role of demand satiety

The paper presents a model of economic growth based on a population of heterogeneous and interacting agents. This model succeeds to generate - in a single framework - GDP growth and cycles as well as product life cycles. Contrary to the existing literature, we find that an increasing variety of consumer goods is not a necessary condition for sustaining the economic growth when consumers are subject to satiation. Indeed, intensive creative-destruction - that is an intensive process of sectors births and deaths - appears to be a more powerful growth engine. We also find that changing consumers’ satiety thresholds is likely to affect the nature of the correlation between the cyclical components of macroeconomic time series.     

Some Social Economics Concepts for Future Research

Under the guidance of a recrudescent nineteenth century ideology, the governance of the global economy has been profoundly altered in the past three decades; indeed, a veritable Great Capitalist Restoration has emerged. It is important to view the transitioning economies and emerging market economies as part of this massive shift in governance. The concept of economic surplus offers a useful perspective on the political economy of governance regimes. Karl Polanyi’s post-Marxian view of lives and livelihood provides important insight into the nature of the Great Capitalist Restoration, its ideologically-driven impetus, and its eventual foundering on the shoals of instability, insecurity, inequality, and social and ecological unsustainability. The ineluctable crisis of the Great Capitalist Restoration provides another opportunity to construct a viable democratic economic future, one that avoids the pitfalls that brought down the corporate-welfare state, and offers more than inauthentic, joyless commodity consumption. To build the Road to this Future, we will need a powerful heterodox economic analysis of agency and governance, guided by a vision of an economy which is subordinate to the lives it provisions.     

On the relation between ecosystem services,intrinsic value,existence value and economic valuation

Various attempts have been made to amalgamate the concepts of intrinsic value and ecosystem services, often with a stop-over at the economic concept of existence value. These attempts are based on a confusion of concepts, however. In this article, two types of non-use values are distinguished: warm glow value, related to the satisfaction people may derive from altruism towards nature, and existence value, related to the satisfaction people may derive from the mere knowledge that nature exists and originating in the human need for self-transcendence. As benefits to humans, warm glow and existence values can be considered ecosystem services. Neither warm glow value nor existence value represents benefits to nature itself, however. Intrinsic value lies outside the scope of the wide palette of ecosystem services.Although the concept of ecosystem services does not cover benefits to nature and the intrinsic value of such benefits, intrinsic value is not necessarily incompatible with economic valuation. Although a deontological ethics does not allow economic valuation of nature as an end in itself, consequentialism does. In consequentialism, however, intrinsic value is not attributed to nature itself, but to benefits to nature. These benefits can be economically valued on the basis of benefit transfer.     

Economists,social reformers,and prophets: a feminist critique of economic efficiency

This article examines the concept of Pareto optimality, bringing to light some of its implicit assumptions about the nature of human agency, work, and gender. It explores the androcentric character of the economic agent and the gendered nature of neoclassical models in relation to the historical development of the concept of economic efficiency during the late 1930s. The thrust toward the development of Pareto optimality as a scientific criterion of economic welfare was a response to the methodological tensions between the clearly political nature of economics and the scientific aspirations of economists. An examination of the debates from this period illuminates some of the values that became embedded in neoclassical economics, and which are now hidden by the masks of mathematics and abstraction.     

The long-run impact of human capital on innovation and economic development in the regions of Europe

ABSTRACT

Human capital is supposed to be an important factor for innovation and economic development. However, the long-run impact of human capital on current innovation and economic development is still a black box, in particular at the regional level. Therefore, this paper makes the link between the past and the present. Using a large new dataset on regional human capital and other factors in the 19^th and 20^th century, we find that past regional human capital is a key factor explaining current regional disparities in innovation and economic development.     

Credit growth,monetary policy and economic activity in a three-regime TVAR model

We employ a Threshold Vector Autoregression (TVAR) methodology in order to examine the nonlinear nature of the interactions among credit market conditions, monetary policy and economic activity. We depart from the existing literature on the subject along two dimensions. First, we focus on a model in which the relevant threshold variable describes the state of economic activity rather than credit market conditions. Second, in contrast to the existing TVAR literature, which concentrates exclusively on single-threshold models, we allow for the presence of a second threshold, which is overwhelmingly supported by all relevant statistical tests. Our results indicate that the dynamics of the interactions among credit market conditions, monetary policy and economic activity change considerably as the economy moves from one phase of the business cycle to another and that single-threshold TVAR models are too restrictive to fully capture the nonlinear nature of those interactions. The impact of most shocks tends to be largest during periods of subpar economic activity and smallest during times of moderate economic growth. By contrast, credit risk shocks have the largest impact when output growth is considerably above its long-term trend.     

Introduction: Quality of Life Indicators

Economic growth has increased the potential for a materially more fulfilling life. But economic growth has a price: it undermines the contributions of households, communities, and nature, on which all economic activity depends. How can we make visible, in economic terms, the qualities that are lost as a consequence of excessive economic activity? In the spirit of these critical discussions, Feminist Economics has initiated this issue's exploration of quality of life: Which aspects of life do economists regard as essential to the concept? What can we learn from disciplines whose traditions of quality of life research are older than ours? The ten articles that follow suggest, in the brief form allowed by the format, a number of different ways to approach these questions.     

The Treatment of Smith's Invisible Hand

Adam Smith used the metaphor of an invisible hand to represent the instincts of human nature that direct behavior. Moderated by self-control and guided by proper institutional incentives, actions grounded in instincts can be shown to generate a beneficial social order even if not intended. Smith's concept, however, has been diluted and distorted over time through extension and misuse. Common misperceptions are that Smith unconditionally endorsed laissez-faire markets, selfish individualism, and Pareto efficiency. The author draws upon recent literature to clarify Smith's meaning and to discuss ways of improving its classroom presentation. The author argues that the invisible hand operates within a variety of institutional settings and that a number of arrangements are compatible with economic progress.     

Deepening the economic reform from the relationship between man and nature

Since 1978, China has gained worldwide shin- ing achievements following the idea of seeking the truth of the fact to carry out economic reform for over 20 years. From the relationship between hu- man being and nature, the economic development has entered a new era, eco-era. The new era re- quires us to further deepen economic reform from the relationship of human being and nature while we are keeping on economic reform based on the relationship between human beings so as to realize sustainable…     

Monetary valuation of ecosystem services: It matters to get the timeline right

In the abundant literature dealing with the monetary valuation, or monetization, of ecosystem services (MES), with very few exceptions, the concept is presented as having emerged in 1997. In fact, there is a long history, starting in the late fifties but largely ignored, of sustained attempts to assign monetary values to nature's services. These early efforts encountered many conceptual and methodological roadblocks, which could not be resolved and led a number of researchers to argue that monetary valuation was not a fruitful approach. It is in that context that MES was hailed by some in 1997 as a promising way to integrate environmental goods and services into the logic of economic markets. Knowledge of the full timeline casts a very different light, in particular on the difficulties currently encountered in the practice of MES; far from being the expected growing pains of a young discipline, these difficulties turn out to be long-standing problems that have eluded solution over the last half-century and appear intrinsically unresolvable. This perspective suggests that, at this point, it is advisable to look at alternatives to MES for the integration of nature into economic decisions.     

Harmony between man and nature：the base for the harmonious society

The harmony between man and nature is the base for the harmonious society. It is determined by the eco-ruleand eco-economic rule. Human being should not violate the eco-rule. However, human being can make eco-systemsupply suit economic growth and its speed through systematical innovation and restriction of human economic activityand choice. Through technological innovation, efficiency satisfaction of unit resource can be increased; structure andfunction of eco-system can be perfected; supply capability of eco-system can be improved. To build the harmonioussociety, human should consider the reasonable distribution of limited resources from two sides. The first one is that theutilization of two functions of resource supply and pollution purification to nature should not exceed its special supplycapability formed under its special structure and function states, i.e. harmony between man and nature. The second sideis human being should think over the reasonable and effective distribution of limited resources in economic society, i.e.harmony between human beings and society. The reasonable economic activity of human being is the key to the harmo-nious development of man and nature.